A progressive slot does one extra thing with every bet. A slice of each wager is added to a jackpot meter, so the prize grows until someone hits it. That is the whole idea. The meter is the attraction, and it is also the reason these games are built differently from a machine with a fixed top award.
Why the maximum bet matters
On most progressives, only a maximum-credit bet is eligible for the jackpot. Minimum bets still feed the meter. They just do not give you a claim on it. Players who want a long session for a small stake are usually better off on a non-progressive, where the paytable does not reserve its headline prize for the top bet alone.
If you do play a progressive for money, the max bet is the coherent choice: you are already contributing to the prize, so the game only makes sense when you are also eligible to win it. The prize can dwarf a fixed jackpot, which is why the machines stay busy. It can also sit untouched for a long time. Growth is not a promise that the next spin pays.
Standalone meters and linked ones
A standalone progressive keeps its own meter. A linked, or networked, progressive shares one meter across many machines. Hit the qualifying combination on any linked cabinet and the shared prize is yours. The pool can join machines in one pit, or machines in different casinos. More machines mean a faster climb. Online, the link is just a network, so there is no stool to wait for when a floor game is taken.
Some operators cap the meter and advertise that the jackpot must fall before the cap. As the number nears that ceiling, play picks up. The must-hit rule changes the timing. It does not change the fact that one spin is still a random draw.
What Slothill does instead
Slothill games do not run a progressive meter. The top award is a fixed number of entertainment credits on the paytable. You can study that table, including games that pay their largest award only at max bet, without contributing to a shared cash pool. For the other half of the vocabulary — how often a machine pays versus how much it returns — see hit frequency and payback.