11k max win is pretty average I guess. There are some real headline-grabbers in the 100,000x region, but you're pissing into the wind trying to hit a bonus, and, depending on the design, most pay poor average sums in bonus rounds to make up for the pipedream win.
Headline-grabbers for all the wrong reasons... but I've already flogged that dead horse. There's nothing wrong with a 1000x top pay (note I'm not saying max win), or 2500x, or 5000x, or even 10,000x - different slots will cater to different audiences, but having paint drying simulators with 100,000x max wins is not a positive to the industry.
Today's games are tested over much longer periods than ever before to reach the Theoretical RTP because the max wins are so rare.
I would strongly disagree with this - in the case of streamer-bait slots the top pays are
significantly more frequent compared to previous generations. Traditional slots with genuine reels imposed significant design constraints on the pay curve - one decision would inevitably have a knock on effect on other parts of the pay curve.
Once you replace these with scripted game rounds (of which Bouncy Balls is one), there are no such constraints:
- want just-misses every spin? done
- want to pretend your jars move randomly when they don't? done
- want to put 7% of your RTP into your max-wins? done
- want to have 90% of your spins win zero? done
If we look back at the iconic MG 243-way slots, or some of the WMS offerings of the day - the search space could be 1 billion to 10 billion combinations for the base game alone - by the time you include bonus rounds you'd be into trillions and quadrillions.
Modern streamer-bait slots both increased the size of the top pays, and significantly reduced the search space - in some cases into singular millions (e.g. the Scammin Jars incident). To give you an example, Bonus Buy Parody pays 9217x at an average frequency of 148k spins - or
sixteen thousand times more likely than Avalon 2's full screen.
All of that RTP is coming from somewhere... and explains why the base games of these slots are incredibly dull.
I get the logic from a business perspective - better to pay 20 winners stupid max wins than 1000 players significant hits to the same value, but those games are sucking people dry and maybe putting people off instead of providing what should be a responsibly fun pastime.
It's addict tendencies - when there are 500 providers instead of 50, you need something to get your name out there... and if that means designing absurd variance paint drying simulators where the streamers can skip that part and bonus buy at 2000x a time, then ethics be damned.
People misjudge how easy it is to repeat (for UKGC players, you could be looking at 200+ hours of play for one super bonus), and do their brains trying to emulate it... we frequently see conversations about people confusing old school slot design with modern scripted "scratchcard" design - and that's only going to get worse.