Welcome DogBoy!
It seems you have some real valuable information and I can see no flaws in your arguments, so they are probably correct. Besides they are all identical to what this forum already have figured out, except for the information about the 'true video-slot' non-weighted RTG reels, which we still missed better information to confirm. I gave you a substantial reputation boost as my appreciation
First of all I must say I have not been very active on this forum for a while, but that is another story. Secondly I have really much to add to this discussion so I will not use quotes since this will take up too much space.
To answer the original post about the Fruit Frenzy glitch, then it indeed seems like a glitch. I have had 5-symbols twice several times and always received the correct number of free spins. Also I think I remember hitting 3*5 symbols once which also gave me the correct number of shots with the canon and resulting number of free spins.
I agree with KasinoKing and DogBoy that playing any number of lines on Fruit Frenzy result in the same RTP
under the assumption that the reels are non-weighted of course. To clarify the term "Non-weighted" means each position on a reel has same probability and of course same symbol are allowed multiple times on each reel. I believe this is what vinylweatherman was referring to.
To sum up the information you provided about RTG slots you basically claim that they are
fair. We known this to be true for MG, IGT , Rival, 3Dice and Intercasino slots, but for several good reason I had my doubts about RTG slots. The first MG 5-reel video slots are a shameful exception though. They are weighted!
In short with
fair I mean the video slots have the following properties:
1) The 5 reels are 'fixed' ie. does not change except maybe during bonus games. Multiply symbols can occur several times on each reel. So the slots has 5 virtual reels where for each you can write down the symbol sequences.
2) Reels are independant and non-weighted.
3) In case of random jackpot, the probability for hitting it must be propertional to total bet-size.
4) The casino operator can only switch between a few predetermined number of RTP configurations for each slot. (I case of MG, only one configuration for each slot)
Here is the my previous knowledge about these four rules for RTG slots.
1) The slots seems to be true to this. However I remember the spinning animation-blur showed symbols that was not on that reel, but MG also did this mistake. (the same spinning animation was used for all reels)
2) This was my real concern. The notoriously long reel #5 on RTG slots made it hard to tell.
3) Boy I got into trouble with one! But I am sincerely happy for you answer, since it means I was right all the time
In short there was a discussion about the randomness of the "random jackpot" for RTG slots. INetBet forum-representative joined the discussion and claimed hitting the random jackpot did not depend on the bet-size, but had an equal chance on each spins. This did not make sense (payout favor small bets) to me and I proved mathematically that it could not be true. INetBet was then helpful and provided me with a sheet of ~60 RJ hits and corresponding bet-size and player name. Also InetBet wrote to RTG and asked this question, but RTG answered the same as INetBet did(ie. bet-size did not matter). However statistical analysis of the seemly short data gave a clear answer: The bet-size DID matter. I was not allowed to publish the jackpot data for INetBet with my results. This made sense as I was able tell a lot of InetBet players/bet-size under the assumption of jackpot depended on bet-size.
Anyway here is one of the threads about it if you want the full read:
RTG random jackpot thread
If the RTG answer was correct, it would mean the video slots could not be
fair video slots due to math not adding up. If RTG was lying there was no reason to believe much else that come of them. RTG already had very little credibility due to not interfering with the RTG rogue casinos.
4) RTG casinos rarely published payout reports, so we only assumed they had something to hide. (But I am sure they do, most RTG have the slots on lowest setting.)
Besides there once was a curious but most devastating Fruit Frenzy bug that existed for weeks. No matter what - you could never hit the target in the bonus game. It missed 100%. So the number of freespins was always a minimum. Since payout% contribution of the freespin bonus games for typical slots are in the range 20-40%, this would mean Fruit Frenzy was having a really low payout% (RTP) during that bug. Was this a configuration issue? Because then some slots could be set to a really low payout%. (85% range)
When you could tell a bonus game was coming up before reel #5 stopped, this also added to the suspicion. But you gave a good explanation for this.
As an interesting fact I can confirm RTG can change the payout% in realtime, however the players are booted, but they can log in right after and they will be downloading the new version of the game. I tried this with 9/6 JoB videopoker that changed into 8/5 when I was still clearing a welcome bonus.
I was not aware that the weird maximum payout (40000*line bet on RTG) or maximum number of free-spins on IGT (Cleopatra II, Wolf Run etc.) was due to a legal issue about maximum payout. And you are right in most cases that this is really negligible in terms of payout%(RTP). But in case of "Rain Dance" I think the number of lines you play makes substantial difference in terms of payout%, maybe as much as 1%. This is because that IF you hit the 5-scatters then there is a really good chance you are hitting the cap. So if you are playing less lines the total win/bet-size will be higher due to the *40000 line bet cap.
"Items like reel strip layout are like any other trade secret." This surprises me. It was not that hard to crack the MG slots (done using two different methods that gave the same result). Besides it is very easy to design a new slot and configure payout% to certain levels. And as you did with RTG, simply making reel#5 very long makes small adjustments easier. Besides with my slot-analyzer anyone can make a new slot (standard free spin slot).
I think this was enough for now. Keep the information flowing DogBoy!