Problem with pre-order duplicate protection

I preordered the Mercenary preorders and in packs I got duplicate legendary mercenaries. 

I believe now I understand where is the problem - most likely wrong technical decision by Blizzard, which caused damage to paying customers.

On the preorder bundles Blizzard stated: "The Lich King Mercenaries Bundle includes a Diamond Legendary Lich King Mercenary and 50 Mercenary packs" (and it was the same description with other preorders).

But this was false advertising. The preorders only contained Diamond Portraits, not Diamond mercenaries, thus they were not included in duplicate protection. If they were really Diamond Mercenaries, not Diamond Portraits, I would get a regular legendary mercenary instead of a duplicate one. But for both Lich King and Diablo packs I purchased I opened a Lich King and Diablo mercenary from a pack (not portrait, the basic mercenary) getting a duplicate instead of a new mercenary. I believe, this is unacceptable.

Yeah, once I opened up my packs it turns out that you can get the same merc but different skins (golden, diamond etc.) so its entirely possible to get the 'same' merc twice.

Just curious. When you got your pre-order lich king, etc. Were those immediately playable, or do you actually have to get the merc before you can play as lich king etc.

Those were immediately available after Merc launch

That's nice to know. Would be a real bummer if it weren't the case.

Imagine paying over a hundred dollars for the preorders and getting a complete collection 2.5 times instead of 2.5 times more content

For what it's worth, this is not just an issue with the pre-order. I just opened this pack and was disappointed to find that all of the mercs were duplicates.

Do you have the complete set for epics yet?

I opened a pack today and found much to my annoyance that I was granted a skin for an epic I have, rather than an epic merc I dont have.

I heard a lot of talk about there being some kind of protection so you'll only ever get skins once you have all the mercs of that particular rarity, but I guess today I can see that that is not the case.

Quote From dapperdog

I heard a lot of talk about there being some kind of protection so you'll only ever get skins once you have all the mercs of that particular rarity, but I guess today I can see that that is not the case.

I think - or rather thought - there was some distinction between 'card slots' and 'coin slots' in this regard. By 'card slot' I mean the part of the pack which is guaranteed to have a merc in it (at least until you own all the rares), and 'coin slots' are the other 4 parts. My understanding was that an epic in the card slot would be one you don't already own the base version of (and hence falls under some sort of duplicate protection), while an epic in a coin slot would most likely be a skin which doesn't care about duplicate protection at all. I certainly got the 2 cool Tyrande skins very quickly that way.

I'm not entirely convinced it is working that way anymore though.

Quote From dapperdog

Do you have the complete set for epics yet?

I opened a pack today and found much to my annoyance that I was granted a skin for an epic I have, rather than an epic merc I dont have.

I heard a lot of talk about there being some kind of protection so you'll only ever get skins once you have all the mercs of that particular rarity, but I guess today I can see that that is not the case.

Yeah, to be clear on this, I do have all the rares, but I don't have all the epics or legendaries. Like many, I foolishly imagined that duplicate protection didn't treat portraits as unique mercs and expected a new epic merc when I opened that pack

Quote From AngryShuckie

Quote From dapperdog

I heard a lot of talk about there being some kind of protection so you'll only ever get skins once you have all the mercs of that particular rarity, but I guess today I can see that that is not the case.

I think - or rather thought - there was some distinction between 'card slots' and 'coin slots' in this regard. By 'card slot' I mean the part of the pack which is guaranteed to have a merc in it (at least until you own all the rares), and 'coin slots' are the other 4 parts. My understanding was that an epic in the card slot would be one you don't already own the base version of (and hence falls under some sort of duplicate protection), while an epic in a coin slot would most likely be a skin which doesn't care about duplicate protection at all. I certainly got the 2 cool Tyrande skins very quickly that way.

I'm not entirely convinced it is working that way anymore though.

Pretty sure this is not how it works, or if it is it'll certainly never be confirmed. Because its so knee deep in shit that its impenetrable as an explanation. How can anyone aside from blizz justify what a 'coin slot' would be? By opening multiple packs, anyone can see that the 'card slot' is not a constant in terms of position, so what we have here is if you have more than one 'card slot' then it stands to reason that one of them is guaranteed to be a skin, which means the pack quality of each pack is literally much worse than we can imagine.

For now Im running with the convenient logic that there is no protection anywhere, aside from the fact that you'll be receiving coins in 'card slots' only if you've gotten all the skins in that particular rarity. Since there's clearly more skins than there are mercs, you'll be screwed fairly often because of it, unless the logic is that you roll between a skin and a merc for each 'card slot' first rather than as a whole.

Quote From dapperdog

Pretty sure this is not how it works, or if it is it'll certainly never be confirmed. Because its so knee deep in shit that its impenetrable as an explanation. How can anyone aside from blizz justify what a 'coin slot' would be? By opening multiple packs, anyone can see that the 'card slot' is not a constant in terms of position, so what we have here is if you have more than one 'card slot' then it stands to reason that one of them is guaranteed to be a skin, which means the pack quality of each pack is literally much worse than we can imagine.

For now Im running with the convenient logic that there is no protection anywhere, aside from the fact that you'll be receiving coins in 'card slots' only if you've gotten all the skins in that particular rarity. Since there's clearly more skins than there are mercs, you'll be screwed fairly often because of it, unless the logic is that you roll between a skin and a merc for each 'card slot' first rather than as a whole.

My description was perhaps more messy than it needed to be. All I was really trying to say is that there is clearly 1 item per pack that pulls from a different distribution than the others, and is much more likely to give a base merc. Hence I am distinguishing between 'card' and 'coin' slots by what they are most likely to roll into. 

It's messier to describe in Mercs packs than normal ones because the notion of 'duplicates' is different, but in my mind it is doing fundamentally the same thing as when normal HS packs ensure there is at least 1 rare in them. And indeed, I expect they just re-used the old pack opening code for Mercs, with a few adjustments.

Here's what I imagine happens:

• Randomly select the first 4 items from the 'coin' distribution.
  • These are most likely to be coins, but can become mercs. If they do become mercs, they have a good chance of being skins (probably about 75% of the time just by the ratio of skin to base versions, ignoring diamond complications). Skins sadly won't abide by duplicate protection of the base cards since they are treated as different entities.
• If one of these 4 became a merc, generate the 5th item from the 'coin' distribution.
• If all 4 were coins, generate the 5th item from the 'card' distribution.
  • This is MUCH more likely to be a base merc (at least before you own all of them in a given rarity), accounting for the fact we're likely to collect more base versions than skins at first.
  • I assume it can be a skin, but it is difficult to distinguish between that case and just rolling into a skin in the first 4.
  • It can also be more coins, but only once you own all the base rares (frustratingly to collectors like me).
• The 5 items are then shuffled to make it more 'exciting' for players, hence why the card items move around from pack to pack.
  • This looks a bit of a fudge on my part, but it is very plausible from an 'interesting UI' standpoint.

I'm sure I am off by a few details, but it clarifies what I really meant by 'card' and 'coin' slots: they're different distributions of items more than fixed things. It is actually a very simple procedure, with all the complexity tucked away inside the distributions. Even they will be quite simple really; you just need 2 of them lying around.

I only pre ordered Sylvannas bundle and guess what I opened the diamond skin of sylvannas, even if its the diamond one its not ok, because I am missing a lot of legendaries, I rather prefer to open another random legendarie rather than diamond skin....