Ok, I installed it again and now I understand what happened. I'm not sure if it's a bug or a feature but it sure is a different behavior from all the previous Vue versions before. IMO, it's quite annoying and I can't see how that can be useful so I'd classify it as a bug.

See in the image that number I signaled. That number before had effect only for the scatter/replicate dialog. It had no effect anywhere else. Now, in this new build, this number is also relevant for the duplicate tool (regardless of whether you click the duplicate button or press ctrl+d). If you try to duplicate an object, what really happens is that you multiply it, not just duplicate it. In the case of the attached image, if I duplicate any object, I'd get 9 copies of it.

Now, that's really annoying. It means that if I use the scatter/replicate tool, I always have to be careful afterwards to reset the number back to 1. But, anyway, now that I understand it, I can live with it. So, Mazak, thanks for the tip. :-)

Quote - "The scatter function I use almost never, I paint a eco system much quicker."

Mazak, two notes on this:
a) for a 2D area you may be right but for a 3D area that's not correct. It's much faster to scatter multiple copies of an object in a 3-dimensional space than to paint it in an eco.
b) eco paint creates instances that you cannot move, unless you select and turn them into objects (which is much slower than using replicate). The scatter is a great way to have a good number of objects scattered across a volume and then manually adjust individual items.