Duplicate protection feedback (golden cards)

Community Discussion
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Hello! I’m so happy that you added duplicate protection to Hearthstone. It makes me happy and more likely to spend to complete my collection of all sets going back to the beginning of Hearthstone.

After buying and opening some packs, however, I realized that duplicate protection does not consider golden copies of cards. About a year ago I stopped dusting golden cards, and started dusting standard copies instead. I love golden cards and plan to continue this practice. Unfortunately, it seems that the new duplicate protection logic means that I usually only receive cards that I have already have two copies of (one or more being golden).

Is this something you would reconsider? If I have 1 golden Snipe and 1 regular Snipe, could duplicate protection apply? Otherwise, I’ll have to purchase packs until my ‘regular’ collection is complete again, and only then start to guaranteed to receive cards missing from my collection.

Thanks for everything you guys do to continue to make this game great!

Best, Seth

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This is the reason that I have not open my packs yet, as there is no duplicate protection when you have one golden one normal or 2 golden; I think is not working as intended specially if you read the patch notes regarding this matter. I also keep golden copies and disechant the other copy and keep 2 cards of each. Nobody seems to know within forums or outside this(search a bit) if this is intended. I would like to have the whole collection but if the new system works like this, iam going to get cards I already disenchant to keep a golden or two of them till I have once again 2 of the non golden versions.

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I think it is working as intended, and what you’re seeing is actually a feature.

The logic seems to be—when you get a card of a given rarity, the game looks and:

  1. If you have any missing cards of that rarity (i.e. one or zero if it’s non-legendary, 0 if it’s legendary) you’ll get one of those cards.
    • It gives preference to cards you haven’t ever dusted. e.g. If you have a complete set of classic Rares except you have no Angry Chickens and no Lightwardens, but you once dusted a Lightwarden, then the next two classic Rares you get will be a Angry Chickens.
  2. If you have a complete set of cards of that rarity, and you get a non-Golden card, the game gives preference to cards where you have at least one Golden.

And this is a good thing! If I have two ordinary Angry Chickens and I get a third one, I dust the third one, 20 dust, end of story. But if I have one regular Lightwarden and one golden, and I get a regular Lightwarden from the pack, I get to choose what I do. If I need the dust, I can dust the golden one for 100. If I like shiny things, I dust the regular one for 20. I’m no worse off than if I got the Angry Chicken, and I might be better off.

I don’t know how it gives out golden cards. My hope is it’s the reverse logic, and it gives preference to cards where I don’t already have two golden… but I don’t know.

UPDATE: Nope, I was mistaken on some points! See TheCollector’s post below:

Apparently it doesn’t matter what’s currently in your collection. Every card is tagged “owned” if you’’ve ever had the card since 17.0 dropped (whether you’ve dusted it or not). If there are any “unowned” cards of a given rarity, you’ll get those. If there are none—if you’ve had all the cards at some point, regardless of whether you’ve dusted them—then you’ll get a random card, with no preference for the ones you’re currently missing.

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It’s not, because of there’s only 1 Legendary from a set you might need, but you have some golden only Legendaries, then the duplicate protection won’t apply to those golden Legendaries so there’s a chance you’ll get a regular version of a Legendary that you already have gold instead of the 1 Legendary you need.

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From all I’ve seen, pack protection means first priority is cards where you don’t have enough for a deck. If you have enough of every card in a particular rarity, then it pays attention to things like “which cards are golden and which are common”.

If you can show me a case like you describe—where (eg) you have no copies of Catrina and a golden copy of Scargil, and your pack gave you a regular Scargil instead of Catrina—then please provide evidence. That’s not what they’ve told us.

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This just happened to me. After having all the legendary cards in an expansion, mix of golden and non-golden, I’ll save up packs until I can open a legendary again. I’ll disenchant one that I want to try to get golden, and open packs until I reopen the legendary and hope I get lucky its golden.

So, did this same thing this morning with Oondasta, having all other legendary cards in the RR set including a golden Halazzi. Instead of reopening Oondasta, I opened the normal copy of Halazzi.

I came to the forums to see if this is intended and found this thread. I like the duplication protection concept for the new expansions, but it seems to come at the cost of losing the benefit of having a golden legendary without the regular.

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The “old” legendary duplicate protection looked at your collection to see what you own now. That allowed the type of trick that TheColector describes where, once you have all legendaries, you can disenchant one and are guaranteed to get that one back the next time you find a legendary (to allow for a chance to get a golden).

The “new” triplicate protection for common, rare, and epic cards does not look at your collection, but at the history of your cards received (through pack opening, through random card rewards, or through crafting). So even if you dusted the second copy (or both copies) of a card, you still won’t get it again until you have received at least two of each other card of the same rarity and same set. And after that, it is all random.
When the new triplicate protection was announced, nothing was said about legendaries. So it is (to me) unclear whether they are still governed by the old system (looking at what you own) or by the new system (looking at what you own or have owned). But the test done and shared by TheCollector seems to indicate that legendaries now, too, use the new system.

Regardless, neither the old nor the new system cares about golden or plain. Two plain copies of Wisp, or two golden copies of Wisp, or one plain and one golden copy of Wisp … three variations that for the purpose of triplicate protection all are considered as “two copies of Wisp”. Meaning you won’t get any other Wisp until after you have received two of all other Common Classic cards.

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I don’t think that’s quite true. Since 17.0 dropped, the “dust extra cards” button has not activated once—every time I opened a pack (from Year of Dragon or classic), all my duplicates were cards where I had at least one golden. If it didn’t care about goldens at all, then some of my duplicate commons should have been cards where I had two ordinary of that rank.

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I think the problem is that the new system does not know which cards we disenchanted BEFORE the patch, so we will receive ONE normal copy for each golden that we have. Once we disenchanted those, it’s probably going to be random.

Remember, the system is new. It probably wan’t even tracking which cards we disenchanted before.

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So hopefully this helps other people searching / watching this thread. I’m not allowed to post links, but you can google the phrase below and see it on hearthpwn and echoed by HS Dev Liv on reddit.

" There’s a caveat here: once you receive a card, you’ll have it marked for “collected” purposes . So if you disenchant a card you’ve received, it’s still considered “owned.” So you can’t exploit the refund system that way. There’s a great benefit to this though: If you don’t like a particular card or class, you can disenchant them and not have to worry about getting them in future packs. This “collected” tag lasts forever once you have collected it."

This makes sense, as if they nerf a bunch of commons, they don’t want people just reopening the same commons and using the dust to craft other cards, then finally just reopen the commons after the nerf event, and the benefits as mentioned above of disenchanting whatever you don’t want and not getting it again until its a “random” assignment. For example, all cards of a rarity in a set are marked as owned, regardless of if you still have them or not - and now its a random assignment from the pool of possibles in that rarity / set.

So for old packs right now, where you may be missing cards, they weren’t marked as “owned” before (like Estelyen pointed out), so any missing card seems fair game it appears.

But once you “own” the card (through opening or crafting), as well as every other card in that rarity of that set, if you disenchant it you may never open it again - its all random at that point. So trying to go for the golden legendary (as I described above) is dead - disenchanting a legendary could open any other random legendary in the set - possibly even a duplicate of one you have.

I’m going to disenchant a common from my AoL packs after I have them all to try it out, but feel free to point out flaws in the logic. And if I am understanding this all correctly, be careful (definitely with legendary cards at least) on what you dust! You may have to craft it again if you change your mind in the future.

Edit - and as mentioned by BigHugger, with it being all random after the initial marking of “owned”, just pointing out the addition that you won’t specifically open it after you have all others in that rarity.

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