Pulling the same dupes over and over.

Smokincookz

It seem that with each set, I pull a certain mythic or rare, and get dupes of those cards very early on. Out of 25 remaining mythics from Iko, I pull one of the five I already have. Has only happened a couple times with rares this set, though I am not going for nearly as many PP’s this time. With the commons and uncommons, it almost always seems bad. 

I remember opening RNA packs and getting so many Angelic Exaltations that I lost count. I’m not joking, I got at least a dozen of them while having rares left to obtain- even after completing the set, it often came up as a dupe. During M20, I pulled Atemsis twice while still having most of the mythics left unobtained. 

Why does it seem that in each set, a couple mythics and/or rares are chosen randomly for a player and always pulled more frequently? Or am I just seeing patterns where there really are none?

Volrak

Smokincookz said:

I remember opening RNA packs and getting so many Angelic Exaltations that I lost count. I’m not joking, I got at least a dozen of them while having rares left to obtain

Here's a plot of the expected distribution of number of copies of your most-duped RNA rare, at the point of collecting all 40 RNA rares, assuming no crafting or non-duplicate packs and ignoring exclusives.  12+ copies of your most-duped rare is a little unlucky but not particularly strange.  Most people would get 9 or more.

During M20, I pulled Atemsis twice while still having most of the mythics left unobtained. 

Here's a plot of the expected distribution of number of copies of your most-duped M20 mythic, at the point of collecting 17 of the 35 mythics, again assuming no crafting or non-duplicate packs and ignoring exclusives.  Most people would get 3+ copies of their most-duped card by then.

Which card ends up being your "most-duped" is not "chosen" but is just an outcome of your random drops.  Assuming the same drop rate for all cards of the same rarity in the same set, it's just as likely to be any of them.  (That assumption isn't a given by the way, but it's also not at all necessary to explain your observations, which just look like normal randomness.)

Smokincookz

Thanks for the charts! I guess getting a dupe out of 30 possible mythics while owning five isn’t so unusual. I definitely pulled my second Atemsis while having her as my only M20 mythic owned, which I found strange. Not impossible I guess. Most of the same RNA rare was pulled when I had less than half of that set’s rares. Again, not impossible, but seemingly odd. I have not kept track of the data accurately enough to really draw a conclusion.

Volrak

Glad if they help.  For 5/30 mythics, it's a bit over 40% of people who get one or more dupes before getting their 6th non-dupe.

FindingHeart8

I find it odd to get 3 of the exact same card in a single pack.  Doesn't happen often but seems statistically unlikely 

Volrak

FindingHeart8 said:

I find it odd to get 3 of the exact same card in a single pack.  Doesn't happen often but seems statistically unlikely 

Perhaps needless to say, but it doesn't just seem statistically unlikely - it is

FindingHeart8

Volrak said:

FindingHeart8 said:

I find it odd to get 3 of the exact same card in a single pack.  Doesn't happen often but seems statistically unlikely 

Perhaps needless to say, but it doesn't just seem statistically unlikely - it is

Haha well played.  Hadn't had my coffee yet

andrewvanmarle

critman said:

Smokincookz said:

Or am I just seeing patterns where there really are none?

The thing about confirmation bias is, that when you learn about it, you start seeing it everywhere...

Very philosophical of you

Nalthazar

FindingHeart8 said:

I find it odd to get 3 of the exact same card in a single pack.  Doesn't happen often but seems statistically unlikely 

A bunch of the people in my coalition have been looking into and speculating about this. One of the guys opened I think 1,000 packs and found that 10% of the time you get back-to-back cards that are the same. You will almost never get 3 of the same card, but two back-to-back happens quite a lot. The supposed odds on that happening should be very low. I have noticed it happening a lot lately too once they started looking into it. This week 4 of my 7 packs had back-to-back duplicate cards. Interestingly the double cards in a pack always seem to be back-to-back and will happen regardless of rarity. It could just be complete nonsense, but maybe not. 

TheHunter

I pulled 3 Gravitic Punch's from a Rav pack in April. I was fuming but told myself doubles aren't uncommon to get, so three of a kind must happen every now and then. Just not to me :-( .

I won't try and work out the odds, I got that VERY wrong last time I tried, but it's the only time in 18 months of membership its happened. 

Edit: An after thought as I was looking at this. It's all digital, 1s and 0s right? So it must be relatively easy to stop this happening. I'm not a coder, but surely there's a randomness/allocation algorithm that handles what cards appear in your pack? I'm talking about dupes in a pack, not dupes of cards you already own.

Mburn7

Xucachris said:

I pulled 3 Gravitic Punch's from a Rav pack in April. I was fuming but told myself doubles aren't uncommon to get, so three of a kind must happen every now and then. Just not to me :-( .

I won't try and work out the odds, I got that VERY wrong last time I tried, but it's the only time in 18 months of membership its happened. 

Edit: An after thought as I was looking at this. It's all digital, 1s and 0s right? So it must be relatively easy to stop this happening. I'm not a coder, but surely there's a randomness/allocation algorithm that handles what cards appear in your pack? I'm talking about dupes in a pack, not dupes of cards you already own.

We've been asking for that for literally forever (the first CS Ticket I ever opened was opening 3 of the same rare I already had, one of 2 in my collection,in my Origins Big Box waaay back in the day).

The "solution" to that problem was the restructuring of the packs to the current state (not kidding, the announcement referenced our request to get less copies of the same card in our pack purchases).  It turns out the only way that "solved" anything was by just reducing the number of cards we got for our purchase and nerfing the guaranteed rare, thus reducing our chances of getting multiple copies of the same card, especially mythics.

But there is definitely a way to do this, since WoTC did basically that in MTG Arena last year.  If you already have 4 copies of a card and it would be opened as a rare/mythic reward in a pack or card reward it is automatically replaced by a different rare/mythic from that set that you don't have 4 copies of.  I am positive that there is a way to tweak that for MTGPQ purposes where if you already opened a card in a pack it can no longer be opened in that same pack.  But I highly doubt we'll ever see that, since it would decrease the number of duplicates we see in packs and that's bad for the bottom line or something.

Avahad

just following on from what @Mburn7 says there- I firmly believe that there should be a way in game to ensure you NEVER pull a dupe of a card you have PAID for. That feeling of getting 500 orbs for a  £20 odd purchase is something that has helped stop me buying exclusive cards.

TheHunter

I think there's two different grumbles going on here, one about duplicating what you already own, and one about distribution of cards in boosters.

If you pull a card from a pack, and it's already in your collection, that's tough. That was always part of paper Mtg way back in the day when I bought FAR too many of those yummy packets. Who didn't have a huge stack of excess dupes? If you bought a box of paper boosters you could feel pretty confident you'd get most of a set, with just a few rares to chase/trade. Mind, the packs had 15 cards and always a Rare so it felt like good value.

However there is a big point about distribution, and I think the electronic cards feel less well distributed than I recall paper cards being. Add to that the extra two levels of rarity, fewer cards per pack and the incredible cash cost of crystals and packs (£38.99 for two Origins boosters and handful of gems, crystals and runes???), and the devaluation of booster orbs, then it's obvious the players are getting a raw deal.

It seems a strange way to try and grow revenue by fleecing your loyal customers!

Smokincookz

Good points all around. We haven’t even opened the can of worms that is rare vanguard duplicates yet. I didn’t mess with those too much after getting a dupe on my second pull. Some people wasted a lot more jewels on those for sure.

Volrak

Xucachris said:

However there is a big point about distribution, and I think the electronic cards feel less well distributed than I recall paper cards being.

Yes - it feels that way because it is that way.  Paper mtg uses non-randomness to avoid undesirable outcomes.  If each card in an mtg pack was chosen randomly, there'd regularly be dupes within the same pack.  Instead, they use non-random sequences to ensure it pretty much never happens (except for foil dupes).

Dupes happen in mtgpq because, as far as any study has been able to tell, no special non-randomness is applied, and each individual card drop is random.

Nalthazar said:

A bunch of the people in my coalition have been looking into and speculating about this. One of the guys opened I think 1,000 packs and found that 10% of the time you get back-to-back cards that are the same.

I don't suppose the complete raw data from those opened packs is available?  It sounds like exactly the kind of data which could be analysed to test theories about card distribution.

Nalthazar

I don't suppose the complete raw data from those opened packs is available?  It sounds like exactly the kind of data which could be analysed to test theories about card distribution.

It is, but I don't know if the fellow is open to sharing it with the community as a whole yet. I think they are running a ton of tests on it independently at the moment. critman said:

By 10% of the time do you mean... every time you see a new card, or open a new booster, or open a new premium pack? The odds of opening back to back cards might be smaller than you'd think.

As in 10% total of the 1,000 packs opened had a double card pull back-to-back. It happened with every rarity, including masterpiece. 

Smokincookz

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/82744/two-times-the-same-card-in-a-row-when-opening-booster-packs