IMO, the reason why slots have become less enjoyable is because of one thing.....the exponential increase in slots that have what I would call "nosebleed volatility".
The kind of volatility that suits those with the "go big or go home" mindset.
To all those CM members who were here before the Megaways era, ask yourself......
How many slots (excluding progressive jackpots) were capable of producing a win of 100,000x?
What about 20,000x? Or even 10,000x?
Answer: Not a lot. Off the top of my head...Flowers, DOA, IR, Finer Reels.
And perhaps (at a stretch) Penguin Vacation, Irish Luck and Great Blue.
I honestly can't think of any others.
But now? There's an absolute craptonne of them. And let's not kid ourselves here.
There's plenty of us (myself included) who have seen screenies of some really stupifying wins and thought....
"Hmm. I wouldn't mind some of that"
And that's where the problem starts. You want a chance of a much bigger win?
Well, there's a price to be paid for that....a much lower chance of getting any win at all.
The bigger the big win, the more people there are that have to foot the bill for that bigger big win.
Players seem to have forgotten the price that has to be paid for those big wins to be made possible.
Players seem to have gotten so seduced/blinded by a slots big win potential, that they forget that the prices that have to be paid are:
much higher volatility, fewer decent features, lesser feature triggering frequency (in some cases),
much quicker bustouts and significantly less playtime.
Is there a solution? Yes, there is. Fine tune your game selection.
Maybe see past the big win potential of some of these slots that play tighter than a ducks arse
and go back to some of the older games from the pre-Megaways era.
Games like IR, Finer Reels, Playboy, Jurassic Park. Maybe even the re-trigger happy Novos.
You know what my favourite game is right now? Creature From The Black Lagoon.
A game that is "almost impossible" to win 1,000x on.
A game that is capable (on a bad day) of ripping you a new one and giving you plenty of poor bonuses.
But it's also capable of dishing bonuses out in bunches. Not to mention wins between 50x and 100x.
And you will likely get some decent playtime more often too.
What's most important? Winning huge? Winning big? Or just winning something?
Sometimes, you have to lower your expectations or "think smaller" in order to get more satisfaction from your slot play. Because bigger is not necessarily better.