Not much difference in the hit rate, but it's what you're hitting. Who knows whether the reel sets change per account if the game is aware of your rtp, doing well you get switched to the reels where the rtp is concentrated in base game hits that on average take 10,000 spins to hit, and bonus scatters are reduced.
Not sure of the legality of such a theoretical setup, but once I learned fixed odds based slot games have multiple reel sets it's made me suspicious, there's a route there to set gameplay against typical deposit/stake size/session length.
All theory mind you, just my layperson's thoughts of a way it might happen. Everything would still be random, but the odds change per reel set.
Yeah, always crosses my mind, that when you log into a game, what are you actually logging into? I mean, you can’t physically see a slot can you.
It’s not like walking into a Casino and saying I will play that one in the corner, put your dosh in and the game doesn’t know you from Adam. No, when online it seems that you log into the same game each time and that is your own personal version.
There could be other contributing factors but the fact you can leave Bonanza on certain sites, then come back a week later and the screen loads to where you left off, leads me to think it’s your own version.
If that’s the case then you can never win long term, as it’s programmed to allow swings but the house edge will always kill you eventually. As opposed to walking into a Casino and choosing different slots at random where you could theoretically win every day if you were super lucky.
How much money is being fed through a game, surely plays a significant part, I think. For a slot to play at premium potential, the volume of stakes needs to be at its highest. That would explain why in the earlier years, we saw bigger x wins, @pinnits 9 scatter trigger, etc but now those are a distant memory as its popularity faded away.
If you are wondering where I get that last theory from, it’s from the FOBT roulette. I am not a fly by night poster who posts on a whim, I’ve got years of experience and I study things intently.
What I noticed with FOBT’s was that at the height of their popularity (before they had slots available), the vast majority of people played the roulette. Now they absolutely were not random and I guarantee that. They worked on a compensatory mode (as do slots and don’t let anyone tell you different).
On the days when the bank was full and they were ready to pay, there was a sequence of your “best number” (the most profitable) appearing 3 times in 4 spins. Either hit, hit, miss, hit or hit, miss, hit, hit but never 3 hits in a row. As time moved on and the volume of money decreased that pattern was never ever seen. I have a strong feeling slots work in a similar fashion.