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Ask the Slot Expert: Bao Zhu Zhao Fu firecrackers -- the follow-up28 December 2022
Last week I wrote about Bao Zhu Zhao Fu (BZZF) and whether its strings of firecrackers really indicate how close you are to triggering a features. I said that based on the one time that I had played the game, I concluded that the firecracker indicator was real. I wasn't right. But I'm not wrong. Let me explain that politician-worthy bit of spin. In Graphical User Interface-speak, the bar that fills in as you download a file is called a progress indicator. I'll refer to the firecrackers on BZZF and similar mechanisms on other machines as progress indicators. I have two conditions for a progress indicator to be real. It has to be countable and quantifiable. Countable means that you can count the number of elements in the progress indicator that have been collected. Many Chinese-themed games have rice bowls that you fill in order to trigger a bonus. It's impossible to count how many grains of rice are in the bowl. It's also impossible to see how many grains are added whenever the appropriate symbols appears on the screen. The rice bowls are not countable. Quantifiable means that we can determine how many elements are in the progress indicator. Thus, we can quantify the percentage of the progress indicator that has been filled. Picking on the rice bowls again, we can't tell how much rice is needed to fill the bowl, therefore we don't know how full the bowl is. The rice bowl is not quantifiable. Last week I wrote that I had looked longingly at a BZZF with nearly completely lit strings of firecrackers two machines down from the Quick Hit Blitz machine I was losing my shirt on because I wasn't getting any bonus rounds or Quick Hit progressives. As I was debating about whether to bail on the Blitz and do the Fu, a woman sat down at the "due" machine. While she was playing, I thought I saw rockets flying into fully lit firecracker strings without triggering the bonus. Granted, I was paying more attention to what was happening -- what wasn't happening, really -- on my machine, so maybe I was mistaken. I thought I had determined that the firecracker strings were real. A few days ago, I played BZZF to test my conclusion. It didn't take more than a few spins for me to see that I was very wrong and that the firecrackers are fake. I don't know how I could have been so wrong. The number of firecrackers lit on BZZF do not in any way indicate how close you are to winning one of the features. Let's look at whether the firecrackers satisfy my conditions. First, they are not countable. From a distance it looks like you can see all of the firecrackers, but up close you can see that there are some that are pointing away from you. We really can't tell how many of the firecrackers are ablaze. Similarly, we really can't tell how many total firecrackers there are. The progress indicator is neither countable not quantifiable. Thus, it is for entertainment only. While I was playing the machine, I discovered another condition required for a progress indicator to be real. The effect that a symbol has on a progress indicator must be predictable. Predictable means that each time the symbol appears on the screen, it affects the progress indicator. Predictable isn't the best term because some amount of unknown effect is okay. I'll elaborate on that in a little while. The rockets on BZZF don't have a predictable effect on their corresponding progress indicators. Many rockets have no effect on their progress indicator whatsoever. So, the rockets and firecrackers on BZZF have three strikes, they scored a hat trick -- they are not countable, quantifiable or predictable. As I said before, I allow some amount of unpredictability in predictable. It's perfectly okay for a symbol to increase a progress indicator by more than one unit. It just can't be zero. You can't have some symbols that don't affect the progress indicator at all. You may have noticed the message on the button deck on BZZF that says that any rocket could trigger its corresponding feature. That in itself does not mean the progress indicator is not real. A symbol can increment the progress indicator by more than one unit. That's good, in fact, when a symbol can trigger a feature regardless of the state of the progress indicator. Let's look at some machines with real progress indicators. Magic of the Nile has three bonus features. Each feature has a corresponding obelisk, which is divided into three segments. When a scarab lands on the screen, it lights a segment on the obelisk of the same color. If the obelisk is completely lit, the feature is triggered. The indicator is countable, quantifiable and predictable. Another machine with a real progress indicator is Hex Breaker. We can see how high a reel is and how much farther the reel has to grow to trigger its feature. The height of an expanding reel shows you how close you are to triggering the feature for that reel. One more machine with real progress indicators is Buffalo Ascension. Like Hex Breaker, reels have to expand to trigger their features, in this case a buffalo stampede. We can see how high the reel has to grow, how much farther it has to grow, and each time an arrow lands on a reel, the reel grows. The Wizard of Odds calls these machines Variable State Machines. The odds are different when a real progress indicator is close to being full. I've seen people go to Magic of the Nile and other variable-state machines and cycle through the different bet levels to see if there is one with nearly full progress indicators. A man did just that to the Magic of the Nile machine next to the one I was playing today. Another issue I addressed last week was whether you could fill a progress indicator at the minimum bet and then switch to max when it was ready to hit. All of the machines I listed above maintain separate sets of progress indicators for each bet level. (This might be a good indication that the progress indicators are real.) Before you go cyclying through the bet levels, take a look at the button deck. Each of the machines I listed above shows the progress indicators for the bet level on each bet level button. To sum up, I wasn't right about Bao Zhu Zhao Fu's firecrackers, but I wasn't wrong about the necessary conditions for a real progress indicator. Click here for the latest Covid data. Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.
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