We need to talk about the term 'pre-determined'

When I say 'Pre-determined' I mean

  • Rigged (non random result)

    Votes: 3 7.0%
  • Result generated up front and then shown to me, and this is a bad thing

    Votes: 2 4.7%
  • Result generated up front and then shown to me, and it makes no difference

    Votes: 37 86.0%
  • Result generated up front and then shown to me, and this is a good thing

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Total voters
    43

The Reel Story

Experienced Member
Joined
May 5, 2019
Location
United Kingdom
Ok, I see this term thrown about a lot, so I'm really interested to see what people thing it means when they say it. So before you read on, please answer the poll.

Right, let's get in to it.

Pre-determined does NOT mean 'rigged' or 'not random'. All it means is that the result is generated up front (still random and still using an RNG) before it is shown to the player.

In the example of slots, it is very common practice to generate the result of a spin and the results of ALL of the free spins, retriggers etc, all up front. It's computationally very efficient and it means you don't need to do requests to the server for every spin (which is slower and possibly unreliable such as on a mobile connection).

Note that a 'spin' in a slot is generally everything from the point you place the bet (your stake is taken) to the point that your winnings are credited. So a 'spin' that includes a bonus round, or 10 free spins etc, would still be one 'spin' as there is only one debit and one credit involved. This is why it is ok to generate that whole thing up front, because it all leads to that one payment at the end where you get your winnings.

The only time that something cannot be fully pre-generated (my preferred term to pre-determined) is when there is an actual choice. Not a fake choice (like a picking bonus) but an actual choice, like which bonus round to choose on Danger! High Voltage, or whether to gamble or walk away on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. In these instances, you can't generate any results further than the choice, because then the player would have an advantage of knowing which choice was best :)

Right, now, let's talk about picking bonuses. Picking bonuses are nearly always pre-generated. It doesn't matter what 'thing' you click, you will still get the result that was randomly chosen for you. This is standard practice, is legal and is all fine. HOWEVER, there is an instance that, while legal, I believe is disingenuous. This is when the odds presented to you are NOT the same as the odds of getting the actual result. Let's take Temple of Treasure Megaways as an example. When you click 'random' on the bonus selection, you get to select the number of spins (High, Med, Low) and the number of minimum megaways (also High, Med or Low). They give you 3 boxes to select from for each. This would indicate that you have a 1 in 3 chance of selecting the high result on each, however, those are NOT the odds. The odds of getting high on both are vastly lower (because those results often end up with big wins).

Same deal if you have a wheel with 5 even segments, and one of them says 'JACKPOT'. The odds of getting the Jackpot are NOT 1 in 5. Like I said, this is legal, but disingenuous, so I'm not a fan of it.

Ok, hopefully that explains some things. Please shout with questions :)
 
I have just played the Uncharted Seas battle at VS and of course it knows what is going to land as the ship icon does not expand unless there is a winning symbol on a further real so most people know the reels are pre-determined, this game highlights that the spin is already known before the symbols land.

Gala casino used to update the cash amount on the screen on every game before the spin was complete which put me off playing there, they have changed it since but it took all the fun out of playing, a bit like VS wheel gives you a reward before the spin in complete so you know you are not going to get a jackpot prize.
 
I have just played the Uncharted Seas battle at VS and of course it knows what is going to land as the ship icon does not expand unless there is a winning symbol on a further real so most people know the reels are pre-determined, this game highlights that the spin is already known before the symbols land.

Gala casino used to update the cash amount on the screen on every game before the spin was complete which put me off playing there, they have changed it since but it took all the fun out of playing, a bit like VS wheel gives you a reward before the spin in complete so you know you are not going to get a jackpot prize.

The reels have to know where to stop, so of course the result is "pre-determined. The client (the bit you see) needs to know what symbols to show based on the result the server sends it. But it isnt pre-determined before the button is pressed, it is determined on the press of the spin button. This is the only way you CAN do it.
 
Ok, I see this term thrown about a lot, so I'm really interested to see what people thing it means when they say it. So before you read on, please answer the poll.

Right, let's get in to it.

Pre-determined does NOT mean 'rigged' or 'not random'. All it means is that the result is generated up front (still random and still using an RNG) before it is shown to the player.

In the example of slots, it is very common practice to generate the result of a spin and the results of ALL of the free spins, retriggers etc, all up front. It's computationally very efficient and it means you don't need to do requests to the server for every spin (which is slower and possibly unreliable such as on a mobile connection).

Note that a 'spin' in a slot is generally everything from the point you place the bet (your stake is taken) to the point that your winnings are credited. So a 'spin' that includes a bonus round, or 10 free spins etc, would still be one 'spin' as there is only one debit and one credit involved. This is why it is ok to generate that whole thing up front, because it all leads to that one payment at the end where you get your winnings.

The only time that something cannot be fully pre-generated (my preferred term to pre-determined) is when there is an actual choice. Not a fake choice (like a picking bonus) but an actual choice, like which bonus round to choose on Danger! High Voltage, or whether to gamble or walk away on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. In these instances, you can't generate any results further than the choice, because then the player would have an advantage of knowing which choice was best :)

Right, now, let's talk about picking bonuses. Picking bonuses are nearly always pre-generated. It doesn't matter what 'thing' you click, you will still get the result that was randomly chosen for you. This is standard practice, is legal and is all fine. HOWEVER, there is an instance that, while legal, I believe is disingenuous. This is when the odds presented to you are NOT the same as the odds of getting the actual result. Let's take Temple of Treasure Megaways as an example. When you click 'random' on the bonus selection, you get to select the number of spins (High, Med, Low) and the number of minimum megaways (also High, Med or Low). They give you 3 boxes to select from for each. This would indicate that you have a 1 in 3 chance of selecting the high result on each, however, those are NOT the odds. The odds of getting high on both are vastly lower (because those results often end up with big wins).

Same deal if you have a wheel with 5 even segments, and one of them says 'JACKPOT'. The odds of getting the Jackpot are NOT 1 in 5. Like I said, this is legal, but disingenuous, so I'm not a fan of it.

Ok, hopefully that explains some things. Please shout with questions :)

If you made a jackpot wheel "true odds", the segment with the jackpot in it would be so small, you wouldn't be able to see it!

Everi did a game called Penn & Teller recently where the wheel started off with even segments, and then they "magically" made it true odds, so all the segments changed size. Players hated it.
 
If you made a jackpot wheel "true odds", the segment with the jackpot in it would be so small, you wouldn't be able to see it!

Everi did a game called Penn & Teller recently where the wheel started off with even segments, and then they "magically" made it true odds, so all the segments changed size. Players hated it.

I played Penn & Teller in Vegas hehe. Tho if i remember rightly, that wasn't the actual bonus round, it was just an example part of the preamble. It was weird :-\

And i totally understand why it's done. I just don't like it haha. I rarely play games with pick or wheel bonuses for this (and other) reason :)
 
Only time it has "bothered" me was when getting multiple re-spins in Chinese Treasure. It presents 3 options and then shows you what you "missed out on". But it's straight up lying to you; you wouldn't have gotten less/more spins by picking one of the other options, you get the exact same amount of spins no matter what you pick.

I know this because I kept retriggering up to like 80 spins, but Casumo already showed the post-win balance on the left, as I was playing and re-triggering. And sure enough, it finally landed on exactly the sum that was pre-determined before all of my "choices".
 
Only time it has "bothered" me was when getting multiple re-spins in Chinese Treasure. It presents 3 options and then shows you what you "missed out on". But it's straight up lying to you; you wouldn't have gotten less/more spins by picking one of the other options, you get the exact same amount of spins no matter what you pick.

I know this because I kept retriggering up to like 80 spins, but Casumo already showed the post-win balance on the left, as I was playing and re-triggering. And sure enough, it finally landed on exactly the sum that was pre-determined before all of my "choices".

Yeh, as i said, perfectly legal and very common practice, but in the case of pick bonuses (esp with the fake 'what you could have won'), I'm really not a fan of it personally.
 
My first ever encounter with this was with some Monopoly game years ago. It was about 50p a 'game' and was basically a scratchcard game despite the on-screen animations. It was also what piqued my interest in slots not long after, so think of it as a gateway :eek2:

First time I felt a bit cheated was upon realizing the dice would never hit the good results when needed, or the '50/50' card choices/ gambles would never yield the big prizes :mad:

I knew then something was amiss, and that whatever visual representation I was seeing was not true odds , and therefore a little bit gimped. Mind you, it would have been strange seeing a 1000-sided die or pie chart pop up, it would have broken the immersion somewhat and been quite un-Monopoly-like :D

The game that really drove the point home was that God-awful Hoff slot from a few years ago. I would heartily chuckle as the ' 1-in-3' card selections would always yield the worst outcome, and show you the other two results as being big amounts. I knew then it was all corrupt. And every time I play Bonanza in non-demo mode :eek:
 
At one time there was very little preditermination on games.The earlier MG stuff had percentages that could be
calculated from the reel strips like the old arcade machines, this is a rarity nowdays, the only games that are
close to true appear to be some netents like secret of of the stones.Most other developers games have gone way
too far with preditermination and its just like playing scratchcards.What I object to is the amount of near miss
displays when all that has happenned is that the RNG selects a losing game and its tarted up as close to a big
win.Some features, even quite complex ones are scripted as proved by the fact the credits jump up at start of
the feature and interestingly at VS, trophies are awarded showing the size of the win, ie big win, mega win before
the feature has ended.One thing that I am not sure about is the changes that are made to alter percentages,
probably done by changing the chance of the bonus being awarded and controlling the payout limit of features.
 
The reels have to know where to stop, so of course the result is "pre-determined. The client (the bit you see) needs to know what symbols to show based on the result the server sends it. But it isnt pre-determined before the button is pressed, it is determined on the press of the spin button. This is the only way you CAN do it.

These balance updates can be happening for some casinos too early, right when you start your your balance is taken or increased before end of spin. As somebody mentioned earlier, for some casino it was a case but fixed. All the fun with these huge amount of game providers can cause in integration them to your platform as there different providers servers send your results at different stage and developers have to figure out that these update most convenient time for player like by adding delay to front end balance only to update when XYZ.

Guess many of us have seen this happening when really paying attention for balance updates. Fixing them is not rocket science but getting new provider integrated, it can happen for dev dudes that timing is not perfect. These should be tested in name of UX but.... time to time we see this happen and fixed :)
 
At one time there was very little preditermination on games.The earlier MG stuff had percentages that could be
calculated from the reel strips like the old arcade machines, this is a rarity nowdays, the only games that are
close to true appear to be some netents like secret of of the stones.Most other developers games have gone way
too far with preditermination and its just like playing scratchcards.What I object to is the amount of near miss
displays when all that has happenned is that the RNG selects a losing game and its tarted up as close to a big
win.Some features, even quite complex ones are scripted as proved by the fact the credits jump up at start of
the feature and interestingly at VS, trophies are awarded showing the size of the win, ie big win, mega win before
the feature has ended.One thing that I am not sure about is the changes that are made to alter percentages,
probably done by changing the chance of the bonus being awarded and controlling the payout limit of features.

I think is regular slots, the 'pool of results' like Jammin Jars is still very rare. The near miss thing can often occur if the game isn't bothering to render the whole reel set. Sometimes the symbols above or below the visible ones can just be randomised, so this can lead to seeing near misses that were never actually possible. The actual visible symbols though would still be based on the reel sets. There are lots of odd little ways that are used to present the results to users that can have the effect of showing weird things.
 
totally agree with you and in fact we touched on this the other day.... and just becaause its legal, doesnt make it right.
sadly the people in supposed control of this industry are so behind the times i am suprised they are not bringing out new laws for bell fruit 1 armed bandits that pay in chewing gum rather than cash!! cos thats where they appear to be stuck currently.

these false choices and false odds are in my opinion conning the player and giving them false hope.
 

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