This is very interesting. I once did an experiment at MG casino using this strategy. I "parked" my balance on bonus features, but exited the game without playing those features. I only returned to play the features after I had zeroed my balance. What happened was interesting: Out of the five or so features I played, I received almost nothing from any of them, for example picking "Stop" symbol as the first pick in all pick'em bonuses. That seemed bizarre considering that the outcomes should be random. Maybe this is what you are referring to Hippo925?
Yes, this is one of those "experiments" that exposes some of the "sham" behind the MG software. If the results were determined from when you went back in and THEN played the bonuses, this kind of thing would not happen. The results have been already pre-determined, this was shown BEFORE they fixed this exploit, and the bug in the "bonus bubble". The "bonus bubble" bug showed that the software had ALREADY caclulated your overall win BEFORE you even made your first selection. It also revealed the "short cut" in the VP Double feature, where the card YOU get to "choose" has already been picked for you, and the result determined. Whatever card YOU choose, you will always get the predetermined one shown, win or lose, and the other cards shown you could NEVER have selected.
One of the other experiments is progressive betting on the slots, once the scatters start appearing more frequently, you can put your bet up a little. If this happens after one of the LONG spells between bonus rounds, you can INCREASE the bets after each bonus round in the hope you have caught the cluster, often, the cluster includes at least one retriggering bonus round. Predicting the end of the cluster is hit & miss, because once you have had a long enough gap to show you the cluster is over, it is too late.
But, Goddammit!!! MG fixed this too
THIS is what has changed with Munchkins, these clusters no longer follow a cycle, the bonus rounds are more RANDOM, and somehow this does NOT affect the overall RTP (I'm not so sure).
There are probably a few more of these "gut feeling" patterns that have been fixed, and this is why we keep saying "the games are playing differently since..........."
I expect players were taking advantage of spotting the lead-in to the clusters, and this was better exploited on the lower variance slots, such as Munchkins, and yes, guilty as charged
(Remember Munchkin Meister, when I caught the cycle SPOT ON, and hit the big re-triggering one with 67.50 a spin
- I was lucky, they could never be predicted down to that level, and sometimes there would be a "skip", the buildup of scatters appearing, but no cluster, and you bust trying.
They also had a mess around with Mega Moolah, decreasing considerably the per $ probability of triggering the bonus wheel. We were fed a line about "fewer player are playing, so you don't see so many 'another player won' messages' ". This was disingenious, since fewer players would mean fewer "another player" messages AND LESS INPUT TO THE POOLS! - the two would balance, and the jackpots would have fallen less frequently, BUT FOR STASTISTICALLY SIMILAR AMOUNTS.
To be honest, I LIKED the chance to Mega Moolah, since it gave a point to the Minor and Mini, but MG felt they had to sweep it under the carpet, and put things back the way they were. I would prefer them to go back to 3 and 4 figure Minis, and just be up front about it, have it launched properly as a desirable change, perhaps along with the "my slot" idea.
My belief is that the RNG itself is indeed random, as MG claim, and note this is HOW THEY WORD IT, the GAMES though, have an "engine" that converts a stream of random numbers into a sequence of game results. To add some spice and excitement, I have suspected there is some kind of weighting envelope that is used to give periods of enhanced payouts, coupled with periods of "suck", just like Fruit Machines. This is what keeps players playing Fruit Machines, so why would this not work online too.
When MG make these cock-ups, these things get revealed, never fully, but we get to see something a little "odd".
Does anyone remember 2006, Summer into Autumn. MiniVegas ended up cooling their heels in the rogue pit for a short while because they were confiscating winnings left, tight , and centre. They then offered the most PECULIAR defense to the forum, and this was that SOME players (not the multiple account fraudsters, who were fairly and squarely BUSTED), had their winnings confiscated for what was "illegitimate play, which was neither fraud, or bonus abuse". This would have been pretty hard to prove, given that quite a number of players had NOT taken a bonus, and had played only on SLOTS!
So, here we have RANDOM slots, supposedly "illegitimately played" to the extent that players had WINNINGS CONFISCATED.
WTF happend - WTF knows
(except Microgaming of course, and they just won't say for "security reasons").
Whatever happend, MG updated something, and made a "clusterf***" of it - and operators were left to clean up the mess.
So, in short, MG CAN CHANGE the parameters of EXISTING games, this doesn't mean the have, or they will, but it DID happen to Mega Moolah, and it was noticed by so many that I can say "IT HAPPENED", and MG said nothing. If something has been changed and we DON'T notice, well OF COURSE; MGS WILL KEEP QUIET.
So, I will add Alexis' challenge,
MGS - WTF HAPPENED with this "illegitimate play" fiasco in 2006 - stories of mass confiscations do not go down well, especially when all we get are vague explanations, and ones which have NOTHING to do with "bonus abuse".
MGS - Are older 5 Reel slots WEIGHTED, meaning the patterns are FOR REAL, and not just me imagining that the reels keep on landing on some positions more often that the others - slots like 5 Reel Drive, Carnaval etc.
What about the newer ones, weighted or not.