New Slot Announcement The Final Countdown by BTG (or Danger High Voltage II)

[greylady]

It might help if someone from BTG could count, I always thought 10-3 was 7 but BTG reckon it's 4

 

[Balthazar]

That's the 2nd buggy BTG release in recent months (along with Donuts). You guys need to test the slots a little more, especially since they are released in such a big fanfare with exclusive casinos and such. Come on now.

This bug hurts more than Donuts', it leaves you to believe that you got the juicy, high paying retrigger when you don't.

 

[incrediblestuff]

Hmmm @Big Time Gaming

I am a big fan of your slots, and really dig what you're doing here and other forums - but calling this a visual bug is a bit out there?!
Looking at the vid: you not only hear the retrigger sound, you see the extra spins added, and the Wild expand to stage 2 ..aaaaaaaaaaaand - then it's gone

I definitely would be more than pissed when that happened to me.

 

[colinsunderland]

Hmmm @Big Time Gaming

I am a big fan of your slots, and really dig what you're doing here and other forums - but calling this a visual bug is a bit out there?!
Looking at the vid: you not only hear the retrigger sound, you see the extra spins added, and the Wild expand to stage 2 ..aaaaaaaaaaaand - then it's gone

I definitely would be more than pissed when that happened to me.

Yeah I agree with that. If it was the first time I played it I would feel completely cheated, as I would have thought the countdown was legit, thinking it was doubled or something that I didn't know could happen. Its not like a wild popped in the wrong place, it added the spins and made the wild bigger too. I didn't even notice the weird countdown till after it was mentioned on here.
Not sure BTG have said it was a visual bug though, but then I have possibly missed the post. It's time to promote a new slot though so sure they will be active in the next few weeks to answer questions like this.

 

[Big Time Gaming]

The "front end" issue that caused this has been reported by a few players. The issue has now been isolated and patched.

 

[greylady]

Good that it has been patched but if 'quite a few payers' reported it, how come it made it through testing?

 

[pinnit2014]

Patched cos the (in)famous ‘potential’ was at danger of coming to fruition?

OJ - it’s a BTG

 

[ChopleyIOM]

It does make you wonder with these BTG slots where folks wax lyrical about their 'INCREDIBLE POTENTIAL' that is never realised..... The Bonanza thread here is a prime example, I know CM isn't 'all players everywhere', but with the number of members here who've lumped away at that slot so much (and keep an eye on it out in the wider world), you'd expect someone to have hit one of those 'theoretical monsters' by now.

So now we have The Final Countdown where what looks like it could have gone massive from what the player is seeing on the screen, it's written off as a 'front end issue' (aren't they always?.....), the round result was not affected (are they ever?.....), and now it's been fixed apparently. (Although god knows how it got through QA if it's already been reported by quite a few players.)

But it makes me wonder, how much of a disconnect is there between the front end and the back end on BTG slots? dunover always breathlessly reports to us what the potential of these BTG slots is if x, y and z occurs as the moon enters Saturn's third phase and somewhere in an alternate dimension Nigel Farage stops being the world's biggest obnoxious bellend - but we never see them. I'm no fan of Jammin' Jars but at least that game can and does hit big, and Blueprint regularly release slots that can deliver the goods.

I've long been inclined to think that the 'potential' that appears to exist on the front end with BTG slots, has bugger all to do with what the back end is actually pulling out of its bumhole in RNG results, and indeed is capable of pulling in RNG results. It all seems designed to look like there's massive stuff just a spin or two away to the player, but the back end is safely pulling out undramatic results, largely disconnected from the sound and light show that the player is seeing on screen.

I wonder if this 'front end issue' has just given us a telling glimpse into how these BTG slots work, and on this occasion it showed something it wasn't supposed to that didn't marry up with what the backend had pulled, but what's to stop them doing this sort of stuff all the time, except the front end and back end agree with what they're showing? I mean, think about it, how can the visuals on screen be so disconnected from what is actually happening in the back end, unless they don't really have much to do with one another?

 

[ChopleyIOM]

I've looked into this a bit more, and watched dunover's original video to see how the slot should behave, so as I see it, what happened to The Bandit is as follows.

1) He triggered the feature with three scatters.
2) He took the 8 free spins 'Countdown' bonus. (On this bonus you start with a countdown at 10 and a multiplier at 4x, every scatter that lands during free spins reduces the countdown by 1-3, if the countdown gets to zero you get a retrigger and the multiplier increases to 27x.)
3) On the second free spin, a scatter symbol lands and shows a 3. This should reduce the countdown by 3, from 10 to 7, however, the countdown is reduced by 6, all the way down to 4 (in increments of 2).
4) On the next spin, another scatter symbol lands and shows a 2, this correctly reduces the countdown by 2, from 4 to 2.
5) On the sixth free spin, a scatter symbol lands and shows a 3, this reduces the countdown to zero.
6) The BTG trigger/retrigger 'bell' sound is heard, four extra spins are awarded and added to the remaining free spins total (to make 6 free spins remaining), and the wild symbol grows to 3x3 showing a 27x multiplier. (As it should on a retrigger.)
7) As the next spin starts, the multiplier suddenly reverts to its 2x2 form with a 4x multiplier, 5 free spins vanish, and the round plays out without the retrigger, with the countdown reset to 10.

It looks like the bug started in Step (3) above, when the countdown worked incorrectly, and the slot 'corrected' itself after the 'fake retrigger' in Step (6), before Step (7).

So what the bloody hell is going on between the backend and the frontend here? This isn't a single (cough) 'graphical display bug' like we saw with Donuts, this is almost an entire bonus round playing out incorrectly whereby the player can't really trust anything that's going on. The retrigger is shown onscreen, the retrigger sound is played, and the extra spins are added to the free spins remaining count, what kind of 'front end issue' causes this to happen?

The optics of it are fucking awful, even to the relatively casual observer it looks bent as bollocks, and whilst it's going to be explained away as a 'display issue' (and indeed already has been), it does raise a fundamental issue here of how wide the disconnect is between what the player sees on screen, and what the backend is doing. And then that raises the question, at what point does what the player see on screen become so far removed from what's happening and/or what's possible on the backend, for us to say that the game is effectively deceptive?

In an industry where a large percentage of its customers are well versed with donning tinfoil hats as it is, it really does seem bizarre that BTG have decided to go into the Bacofoil business themselves - I mean, this one pretty much writes itself.

 

[Siohmy]

You’d have certainly thought the error should have corrected itself the very next spin. BTG is very vocal about the fact each spin in their features is pulled from a separate RNG, even if the reels may not be consistent. It does appear in this instance, if nothing else, that the front end did not refresh until the bonus round was complete.

Would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the slot had legitimately re-triggered. Would it still have corrected itself upon the re-trigger or could it have conceivably gone on to show a second re-trigger to only then correct itself.

 

[SlotGrinder]

I don't believe much of what I see on the screen . Just because you see that giant wild whizzing past the top symbols doesn't mean there's actually any chance it could ever land there Anyone with any experience with modern slots has realised this by now . They're not reels it's just a visual display of the amount you already have been allocated as your win amount
Those jars know exactly where they are going .
Take Danger High Voltage - oh wow I got the 9 symbol in gates this is going to be amazing .. wtf where are all the 9s . If it was legit then every bonus would pay huge and you'd get the full 4x4 wild block on a regular basis . Obviously they change the whole setup so whatever symbol you have picked suddenly becomes sparsely populated
This new game I'm sure the massive giant mega multiplying wild CAN land but ofc it won't happen very often and when it does who's to say if it's possible for it ever to land next to the top symbol ? Just because you see the top symbols are possible to hit and the megawild can hit it really doesn't mean it's possible for the two to coincide
Yes , I do think slots are deliberately deceptive . Play one on slow crappy laggy internet and you will see various things happen like scatters and nearmisses will slow down to make you think "damn that was close to a big win" when there was zero chance of it ever happening

 

[SpinUk]

I don't believe much of what I see on the screen . Just because you see that giant wild whizzing past the top symbols doesn't mean there's actually any chance it could ever land there Anyone with any experience with modern slots has realised this by now . They're not reels it's just a visual display of the amount you already have been allocated as your win amount
Those jars know exactly where they are going .
Take Danger High Voltage - oh wow I got the 9 symbol in gates this is going to be amazing .. wtf where are all the 9s . If it was legit then every bonus would pay huge and you'd get the full 4x4 wild block on a regular basis . Obviously they change the whole setup so whatever symbol you have picked suddenly becomes sparsely populated
This new game I'm sure the massive giant mega multiplying wild CAN land but ofc it won't happen very often and when it does who's to say if it's possible for it ever to land next to the top symbol ? Just because you see the top symbols are possible to hit and the megawild can hit it really doesn't mean it's possible for the two to coincide
Yes , I do think slots are deliberately deceptive . Play one on slow crappy laggy internet and you will see various things happen like scatters and nearmisses will slow down to make you think "damn that was close to a big win" when there was zero chance of it ever happening

I think the migration of traditional slots where each reel is randomly stopped indenpendantly, to a RNG pick from a pool of wins (or losses) - i.e the scratchcard method - has created a lot of these anomalies.

 

[Nate]

It does make you wonder with these BTG slots where folks wax lyrical about their 'INCREDIBLE POTENTIAL' that is never realised..... The Bonanza thread here is a prime example, I know CM isn't 'all players everywhere', but with the number of members here who've lumped away at that slot so much (and keep an eye on it out in the wider world), you'd expect someone to have hit one of those 'theoretical monsters' by now.....

I don't know if you were around at the time... but when their first Mega*NO*Pays slot was released in the form of Dragon Born, there were similar complaints. Bad returns, crap features and in general, people were struggling to actually see any of the slots potential.

BTG then conjured up some FAKE screenshots, posted them on the forum and on their OWN competition thread on their website. Bryan caught them... The CEO then claimed that it was a junior employee who was coincidentally found to be using the same computer as him by Bryan ... (Go Figure)

Yeah the story has been told 50 times over and I've repeated it a few times BUT this has relevance to your opening statement. Those Mythical hits were so hard to come by and the slot was losing its credibility / interest, so much so, that BTG had to step in with fakes to try and fool us / keep us interested.

When Bonanza was released the CEO avoided all questions and actually refused to tell us what potential he had seen during testing - WHY? .... Quite obviously, it has F*CKALL potential in reality. Every slot they released soon after was the same - MEGA Potential, but never realised... There are statistics that Casumo provided for 2 months in a row and considering the amount of Mega*NO*pays slots there are, Bonanza and others struggled to cumulatively post hits over 2000x ... I think ALL the Mega*NO*Pays slots put together didn't even reach 20% of the total hits over 2000x bet seen on Dead or Alive / Book of dead. That surely says a lot about their *potential* doesn't it?

Given that Bonanza and other BTG games are rather popular, it shows you how marketing plays a MAJOR part in making people believe there is something to be won, when in reality, you are just being fleeced for the odd 200x to 500x hit.

Nate

 

[SpinUk]

I don't know if you were around at the time... but when their first Mega*NO*Pays slot was released in the form of Dragon Born, there were similar complaints. Bad returns, crap features and in general, people were struggling to actually see any of the slots potential.

BTG then conjured up some FAKE screenshots, posted them on the forum and on their OWN competition thread on their website. Bryan caught them... The CEO then claimed that it was a junior employee who was coincidentally found to be using the same computer as him by Bryan ... (Go Figure)

Yeah the story has been told 50 times over and I've repeated it a few times BUT this has relevance to your opening statement. Those Mythical hits were so hard to come by and the slot was losing its credibility / interest, so much so, that BTG had to step in with fakes to try and fool us / keep us interested.

When Bonanza was released the CEO avoided all questions and actually refused to tell us what potential he had seen during testing - WHY? .... Quite obviously, it has F*CKALL potential in reality. Every slot they released soon after was the same - MEGA Potential, but never realised... There are statistics that Casumo provided for 2 months in a row and considering the amount of Mega*NO*pays slots there are, Bonanza and others struggled to cumulatively post hits over 2000x ... I think ALL the Mega*NO*Pays slots put together didn't even reach 20% of the total hits over 2000x bet seen on Dead or Alive / Book of dead. That surely says a lot about their *potential* doesn't it?

Given that Bonanza and other BTG games are rather popular, it shows you how marketing plays a MAJOR part in making people believe there is something to be won, when in reality, you are just being fleeced for the odd 200x to 500x hit.

Nate

I know all this yet still play Bonanza #mug

 

[ChopleyIOM]

My take on things:

 

[deleted_user-20231116]

I don't believe much of what I see on the screen . Just because you see that giant wild whizzing past the top symbols doesn't mean there's actually any chance it could ever land there Anyone with any experience with modern slots has realised this by now . They're not reels it's just a visual display of the amount you already have been allocated as your win amount
Those jars know exactly where they are going .
Take Danger High Voltage - oh wow I got the 9 symbol in gates this is going to be amazing .. wtf where are all the 9s . If it was legit then every bonus would pay huge and you'd get the full 4x4 wild block on a regular basis . Obviously they change the whole setup so whatever symbol you have picked suddenly becomes sparsely populated
This new game I'm sure the massive giant mega multiplying wild CAN land but ofc it won't happen very often and when it does who's to say if it's possible for it ever to land next to the top symbol ? Just because you see the top symbols are possible to hit and the megawild can hit it really doesn't mean it's possible for the two to coincide
Yes , I do think slots are deliberately deceptive . Play one on slow crappy laggy internet and you will see various things happen like scatters and nearmisses will slow down to make you think "damn that was close to a big win" when there was zero chance of it ever happening

Same with scatters landing above the reels on Dead or Alive, even if you allready have a scatter on that reel. I always found that to be very deceptive.

We see a lot huge wins on Blueprint slots like Genie jackpots megaways and Primal megaways, even i had a 5696x win on Primal megaways. Bonanza is my most played slot, and also the megaways slot i have the lowest win multiplier on. I do see the occasional huge win on BTG slots as well (mostly on queen of riches), but very few in the same range as what we have seen on primal and jammin jars.

 

[Reelsoffun]

It might help if someone from BTG could count, I always thought 10-3 was 7 but BTG reckon it's 4

For some reason though it was counting down in twos, very strange indeed, maybe it was something to do with it landing on the same reel as the multiplier was on who knows lol

 

[Siohmy]

I don't believe much of what I see on the screen . Just because you see that giant wild whizzing past the top symbols doesn't mean there's actually any chance it could ever land there Anyone with any experience with modern slots has realised this by now . They're not reels it's just a visual display of the amount you already have been allocated as your win amount
Those jars know exactly where they are going .
Take Danger High Voltage - oh wow I got the 9 symbol in gates this is going to be amazing .. wtf where are all the 9s . If it was legit then every bonus would pay huge and you'd get the full 4x4 wild block on a regular basis . Obviously they change the whole setup so whatever symbol you have picked suddenly becomes sparsely populated
This new game I'm sure the massive giant mega multiplying wild CAN land but ofc it won't happen very often and when it does who's to say if it's possible for it ever to land next to the top symbol ? Just because you see the top symbols are possible to hit and the megawild can hit it really doesn't mean it's possible for the two to coincide
Yes , I do think slots are deliberately deceptive . Play one on slow crappy laggy internet and you will see various things happen like scatters and nearmisses will slow down to make you think "damn that was close to a big win" when there was zero chance of it ever happening

Jammin’ Jars has been confirmed as predetermined but I thought this was pulled from an actual random spins setup. It was changed to keep to RTP, and avoid bankrupting casinos because, you know, it could actually go on forever! Hence why their rules claim of randomly moving Jars is probably correct at time of design but not in actual production. Unless someone wants to correct me on this.

A lot of the concern with BTG is that, as far as we are aware, each spin is legit random so each feature is not pre-determined. However, because there are no rules as such for what reel setup is used you could have 1000 spaces on reel one with one diamond on it on Bonanza. Still random, still possible, but extremely unlikely. However it can, and does, hit. Chances of more than once in any free spins is insane, matching with others obviously.

It’s why we get the red gem of death which Dunover points out in Bonanza. Also the “no K’s on reel 2” for WWTBAM.

The design has backfired somewhat as, whilst the claim of unlimited multiplier is factually likely to be true, the reality is the feature had to be reined in so much to allow a playable base game and, as per Jammin Jars, not potentially bankrupt a casino. Bearing in mind Bonanza has been around for a long time and stood out as a mental slot for its bonus infrequency, the landscape has now changed massively.

Whilst not always the most enthralling I now look at Bonanza with a bit of fondness as it gives you quite a play time in the current climate. BTG are playing catch up with all the UHV slots coming out with their huge wins. As I posted earlier in this thread, do we really want an even higher variance DHV. Not sure we do. Personally feel Final Countdown could have been a cracking slot if BTG had stuck to DHV variance level. As it is most will get bored long before getting a mental hit. Shame.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

For some reason though it was counting down in twos, very strange indeed, maybe it was something to do with it landing on the same reel as the multiplier was on who knows lol

But where's it getting it from? For those who don't want to sit through the video I linked above (how dare you! ), we're now looking at a total disconnect between what the back end is (we're told) doing properly, and the front end which is to all intents and purposes running a completely different game, which it's making the rules up for as it goes along.

At least with the Donuts bug it was a single spin where we had the error, but what we have here is essentially an entire bonus round that plays out incorrectly. The front end seems to know what it's doing, independently of the back end, insofar as the countdown runs normally once the initial glitch occurs, and it goes ahead and awards the retrigger, complete with ringing bell noise, increased multiplier, and extra free spins, before all of a sudden getting 'yanked back' as it were.

If one were to don the tinfoil hat, [tinfoil]one could suggest the front end was ahead of the back end, the back end realised it was due to pay 7500x stake at a £10 spin, and rather than pay £75,000, pulled the front end back and gimped the bonus. Maybe this sort of stuff happens all the time, but BTG messed up and let the front end show something it wasn't supposed to, whereas normally this gets caught on the back end first.[/tinfoil]

Like I said above, this one absolutely writes itself in terms of conspiracy theories, and even with my logical head on this to me looks like a bit more than a 'graphical glitch', in that we've basically got an entirely different feature being displayed to the player, than that which is running on the back end.

BTG are doing the entire industry a great disservice with crap like this IMO.

 

[Siohmy]

You’d have certainly thought the error should have corrected itself the very next spin. BTG is very vocal about the fact each spin in their features is pulled from a separate RNG, even if the reels may not be consistent. It does appear in this instance, if nothing else, that the front end did not refresh until the bonus round was complete.

Would have been interesting to see what would have happened if the slot had legitimately re-triggered. Would it still have corrected itself upon the re-trigger or could it have conceivably gone on to show a second re-trigger to only then correct itself.

Actually watching it again it does correct before the end of the free spins but only when it appears to realise that the re-trigger it gave was in fact incorrect. Who knows. At least it did pay out effectively what the reels did actually show even if the appearance of the countdown trigger and indeed the re-trigger sequence played out incorrectly. Not the worst I’ve seen.

Whilst not possibly involving as much money I’ve had Rainbow Riches kick me out when triggering 4 leps on my mobile and when I went back in to the game, nothing. Knowing the 20x nature of 4 Leps probably didn’t miss out on much and the casino did give me pretty much this as a “gesture of good will”* but my point is that the reel element with this was correct so whilst not great and hellishly annoying thinking you had a 27x re-trigger it paid as it should.

* bloody hate the “gesture of good will” BS. Most of the time it doesn’t make up for whatever balls up happened. Often used as fob off material.

 

[Mouse75]

Actually watching it again it does correct before the end of the free spins but only when it appears to realise that the re-trigger it gave was in fact incorrect. Who knows. At least it did pay out effectively what the reels did actually show even if the appearance of the countdown trigger and indeed the re-trigger sequence played out incorrectly. Not the worst I’ve seen.

Whilst not possibly involving as much money I’ve had Rainbow Riches kick me out when triggering 4 leps on my mobile and when I went back in to the game, nothing. Knowing the 20x nature of 4 Leps probably didn’t miss out on much and the casino did give me pretty much this as a “gesture of good will”* but my point is that the reel element with this was correct so whilst not great and hellishly annoying thinking you had a 27x re-trigger it paid as it should.

* bloody hate the “gesture of good will” BS. Most of the time it doesn’t make up for whatever balls up happened. Often used as fob off material.

Except it does not correct itself, if it had done so, the countdown should of gone to 2 inline with the scatters received so far. In the video it resets to 10.

 

[ChopleyIOM]

Except it does not correct itself, if it had done so, the countdown should of gone to 2 inline with the scatters received so far. In the video it resets to 10.

Yes I make this exact same point in my video linked a few posts ago, there's a lot about this that doesn't sit right with me.

 

[L&L-Jan]

But the main question is:

When does this slot hit SG/Nyx? Because they dont have it on the roadmap.

Is this slot coming throuhg MGS as well?

Its the 18th of March and nobody can answer me.... @Big Time Gaming !

Kr. Jan

 

[dunover]

Yes I make this exact same point in my video linked a few posts ago, there's a lot about this that doesn't sit right with me.

If you want to see the retrigger working OK @ChopleyIOM I made a secondary 'features only' video shortly after the first review one you referred to.

It may help you work out the issue...

Start at 31:00

 

[Harry_BKK]

But the main question is:

When does this slot hit SG/Nyx? Because they dont have it on the roadmap.

Is this slot coming throuhg MGS as well?

Its the 18th of March and nobody can answer me.... @Big Time Gaming !

Kr. Jan

AFAIK, it should go global two weeks after the exclusive launch at LeoVegas.