Pragmatic Play Big Bass Games

dogshead247

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Dec 1, 2023
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Hereford
So what am I missing?

Stake £1.50 bonus buy cost £150
Stake £1.50 with ante for increased chance of bonus. £2.25 that's 50% increase*

Deposit £500 play with ante bet on @£2.25 base game dead bust out in 235 spins with no bonus*

That's constantly happening on these big bass games. That's 3 times bonus buys worth for no bonus and RTP of under 10%

Bonus from play without bonus buy 28 out of 30 are 10 or 20x return*

Never see the max win fish get caught and it's a rarity to get to level 2 let alone 10x multi level.

Seriously how are they getting away with ripping players off in such a way?

I've had to take time out through GameStop this year because of these big bass games* I'm well over £40,000 down in losses. I had 1x £4,500 win from a £5.25 stake bet, and ever since over 2000 bonuses on stakes between .90 through to £18 all paid 10 or 20x and this is with the ante bet on. Only 11 of those 2000 plus bonuses paid 50x or highest 1 324x

The games are somehow highly addictive and you know you getting blatantly robbed and keep telling yourself that surely it can't continue to be so awfully bad but it really is!

What's your experiences been like?
 
I don't play the big bass games much but bonuses have been a mixed bag, often 20x or less but ive seen a number of 100x or above and a few 300-400x. Couple of 1000x and higher but those were in Vs battles (annoyingly)

Did once get a max fish in bonus from 5 free spins in a site a couple years back , so can say I've had a max fish. :)
 
They are all high volatility and generally a bit shit.

Sometimes I've had 2-3 bonuses within 20 spins others it refuses the even tease.

Got to 10x on Splash with 12 spins and didn't land a fisherman once still went for 400x.

I've had 10x on Blizzard which went for 800x I believe.
 
I rarely ever play Pragmatic games as whenever I dabbled with them, something always felt a bit off. Like it was all a bit pre-scripted (which they are but their games feel too obvious).

Against my better judgement (finding that my regular games seemed to have gone the same way), I decided to give one of their games a proper try. Not going to mention the game or Casino for now but I will be posting my stats for all to see very soon. It doesn’t leave much doubt that you are being absolutely shafted.
 
I also played Big Bass a lot and have seen that in natural bonuses you get better outcomes. A sign of a decent win typically is when the fisherman drops on the 1st spin on reels 1 or 2. Those extra catch features like more fish, more fishermen, etc, before the spins start often mean nothing, except for one that takes you to level 2.

In bonus buys, out of 10-15 buys, you can expect 1 good enough win between 100-300x. If you get a good win in bonus buys, expect the next buy to be shite. However, in that made for 14-year-olds, Sugar Rush is even worse. You can easily get wins of no more than 20x in a row from 5 bonus buys. How to play? I think splitting a balance for mixing a normal play with an ante bet is an optimal way.
 
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It definitely feels like Pragmatic have completed a new round of nerfing their catalog further.

Take John Hunter and the Tomb of the Scarab Queen. This slot is 3/5 on their own volatility scale. I used to regularly get a bonus after 50-100 spins, with plenty of two scatter teases, (although the bonus never seemed to pay that much, and getting the bonus pot spin at the end was near impossible). In the past few months I haven’t got the bonus at all, and teases are almost non existent. It is very noticeable. And this is at max RTP (I never play slots with gimped RTPs). Sad.
 
On BBB the fish get multiplied when you go along the trail but the bonus is capped at 2100x, so if it were possible to catch the max 2000x fish on any other level than the first one, the value would not be multiplied like the others.

I've always found this to be an absolute fucking con and not made clear enough in the game or help pages. To the naked eye it looks like you can catch the max fish at the end of the trail and win 20,000x, but that's not the case.
 
The Big Bass games have the same bones but are very different from each other.

The biggest flag is the RTP set by the casino you are playing through. Pragmatic set several levels of RTP and the casino programs it for their site.

Also the win maximum also should be noted before playing. Big Bass Halloween is max 5000x but Bonanza and Amazon extreme are 15,000x.

Bigwigboard is a great source for information about particular games, including feature frequency. Getting a a feature after 300 spins might be ahead of the curve for some games.

Overall I like the Bug Bass games, I have had some successes and many dead spins in bonus rounds. Keeping it Reel is my favorite. Having a golden fisherman drop with a big multiplier and a full basket is wonderful.

But chasing bonus buys by escalating bets can end a session quick. Sugar Rush always gets me that way.

This is from a non-UK perspective.
 
I like Big Bass Amazon Extreme. I got a couple good bonus rounds that paid 1000x and also the net collection paid out really well a couple times-usually you get a multiplier between 1-5x, so you can imagine my surprise when I had about £50 from the collection and then the multiplier was 20x! So that was another 1k when it was paying out really well-I actually got that twice in one day I think. Promptly lost it all a couple days later-I don't know why I think it's going to keep paying out, although to be fair I just wasn't expecting it to be completely dead after that which is basically what happened.
 
The base game is pretty awful on these. Dead spin after dead spin after dead spin. The only thing that pays is the bonus rounds. Pretty boring IMO to just wait for the bonus round to maybe come in.

To be fair though, seems like almost every game is like this nowadays. No way to win in the base game and just have to either buy a bonus round or wait for it to come naturally and hope for the best. Boring.
 
I like the mechanics of the games but the endless dead spins are why I rarely play it and when I do I am even using the minimum 0.10p spin level because of it. I have had some good hits on them in Videoslots competitions and my wife got to the x10 level on Big Bass Bonanza at Bet365 a few weeks back and won about 520x
 
Fishin Frenzy was always considered dull as dishwater in the base game, and a clone (or in this case an array of clones) is rarely better - particularly from a provider fully on the bonus buy train.

As people are realising, the distortion from streamers where everything is a big win and it's so easy (because they can easily filter out all the losing parts - the bad bonuses, the tangible losses because it's fake money, the boredom by having group pulls or quad-slot play) hits hard when they see a large hole in their bank balance.

For games that are designed bonus-first, the base games can be considered glorified pre-gambles, and extremely volatile ones at that - for example, the FOBT red bag ones are average 1 in 25 £2 spins (so higher frequency and often higher stake) and people have lost more than £500 without seeing them once. Translate that to online and you hear some absolute horror stories, such as yours.

Sadly, too many players fall into the trap of thinking of old school slot design (e.g. traditional reels with 60-80% in the base game, rest in the bonus) and then wonder why their scripted slot with 20% in the base game has rinsed them in a matter of minutes. Few providers surface this information publicly, possibly because people would run away if they were told 800 spins for a bonus, or 100,000 spins for a super bonus - and somehow the bonus is still capable of paying 5x.

I'm sorry you've found out the hard way - and glad you found GAMSTOP. I don't see the landscape improving in the foreseeable future for UK players (even more volatile paint drying simulators, RTPs going below 90% etc) unless the bad actors are shunted out of the industry - the problem being there's a lot of them right now 🤬
 
So, as if the 14-15 BBB's we have got over just 3 years or so wasn't enough, another one is due next month.

This time, it won't just have the standard feature buy. It will also have the option to buy the so called super bonus, for a mere 300x the bet.
1000001207.jpg

This reveals its money grabbing intentions right from the start and I predict we'll also have an even deader base game than what we, in disbelief, have come to know.

I've done a handful of these super bonus buys on other Pragmatics, like The Wild Gang and Zeus vs Hades, and, unsurprisingly, at least 9/10 were absolute shit through and through and the one that accidentally won did not even come close to making up for it. You'll need to buy loads and loads, and who can afford that?
 
So, as if the 14-15 BBB's we have got over just 3 years or so wasn't enough, another one is due next month.

This time, it won't just have the standard feature buy. It will also have the option to buy the so called super bonus, for a mere 300x the bet.
View attachment 192539

This reveals its money grabbing intentions right from the start and I predict we'll also have an even deader base game than what we, in disbelief, have come to know.

I've done a handful of these super bonus buys on other Pragmatics, like The Wild Gang and Zeus vs Hades, and, unsurprisingly, at least 9/10 were absolute shit through and through and the one that accidentally won did not even come close to making up for it. You'll need to buy loads and loads, and who can afford that?
Nobody can afford that.

It's the streamers with fake money who pump these slots. They would never risk a penny of their own cash!

Nate
 
Anyone notice that when William Hill added Big Bass Bonanza to their free spins/Bonus Drop Games, they replaced their 94% version with a 91% RTP incarnation.

It’s shockingly unplayable. And for a casino of that size, no excuse.

The others variants of the game still are 94%, which ain’t great, though a trait I’ve noted with Pragmatic slots is the 94% variants seem to drop bonuses more regularly than the 96% ones. Of them.
 
Anyone notice that when William Hill added Big Bass Bonanza to their free spins/Bonus Drop Games, they replaced their 94% version with a 91% RTP incarnation.

It’s shockingly unplayable. And for a casino of that size, no excuse.

The others variants of the game still are 94%, which ain’t great, though a trait I’ve noted with Pragmatic slots is the 94% variants seem to drop bonuses more regularly than the 96% ones. Of them.
WH have been one of the most aggressive at lowering RTPs - they already have 87-88% models out there, they are goading providers with removal if they don't offer a version lower than 94-96% (and dozens of 96%-only slots have already been pulled to "make room" for others).

Given how many slots are scripted or similar nonsense now-a-days, that seems a nefarious way to "trap" players - lower the RTP (the one that matters) but offer more frequent bonuses of lower value... gives the illusion they're getting a better game when they're not, and it'll take months or years for players to realise (because it's easy to construe as bad luck, rather than the bonus has been nerfed).
 
WH have been one of the most aggressive at lowering RTPs - they already have 87-88% models out there, they are goading providers with removal if they don't offer a version lower than 94-96% (and dozens of 96%-only slots have already been pulled to "make room" for others).

Given how many slots are scripted or similar nonsense now-a-days, that seems a nefarious way to "trap" players - lower the RTP (the one that matters) but offer more frequent bonuses of lower value... gives the illusion they're getting a better game when they're not, and it'll take months or years for players to realise (because it's easy to construe as bad luck, rather than the bonus has been nerfed).
Aye. What really got me was the sheer chutzpah of putting out an email to say they’ve made changes to BBB, and it then being immediately in the cycle of free spins games.

“Here’s five free spins you’ll be lucky to win a penny on”
 
Sky have started doing 1 free spin on their prize machine now and scrapped the ‘mega’ prize machine as well.

It’s very simple. Don’t play anything other than slots on max RTP and take everything u can get for free.
I no longer play there. I won £100 on the prize machine and the next day they banned me from the prize machine. :)
 

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