As we’ve shared in the past, the size of the pots don’t have any impact on your chances of triggering a bonus. But people still wonder about them and what happens if you build them up.
Today’s question was based off a video on Ultimate Fire Link Triple Nova, but the question could really be about any pot game:
I have a question for you regarding the denominations. As you know there’s several stakes that you can play. So let’s say that you’re playing 50c denom at $2.50 a spin. Now you change the stake to $12.50 but on the same denom. My question is: would the bonus feature icon change? On the lower stake, the icon has grown, will it still be as big or will it be smaller?
Mark N.
The general game design rule is that the pots will remain the same size, regardless of bet within the denomination, if the pots don’t have any impact over the bonus. This is a great way to confirm the pots aren’t doing anything to help you towards a bonus.
There are games where they will be different sizes on each bet in a denomination. Our own Brian Christopher’s World Cruise is a recent example, as is Rich Little Piggies/Hens/etc.
That’s because there’s individual counters or other elements on the pot that are evolving at that bet level, and those values are locked to the specific bet level. In that way you can’t build up the counters on a low bet and then trigger the bonus on a high one.
But most pots don’t have such a mechanism going on. So in that instance it doesn’t matter, because it’s all for show, and so the pots will remain the same size as you switch around bets within a denomination. And visually game designers are giving you a hint they don’t matter by not having the pots be different sizes on each bet level within a denomination in this instance.
You’ll sometimes see them change within denominations, and that’s because each denomination can be configured differently, for things like payback percentage. And so they’re effectively treated like different games within the same machine in that way. But even then, the size of the pots are still not an indicator of how close you are to a bonus.
Even on games like Rich Little Piggies, it’s just an indication of what you’ll get when you trigger the bonus, not how close you are to one.
So ultimately they’ll probably be the same on all bet levels. And it’s a reminder to players not to chase pots, because the odds of a bonus are the same on any spin, no matter how big the pots get.
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