Why are bonus buys so expensive

[spindoctor99]

When I am just playing the slots I bet anywhere between $1 and $10 however if I buy a feature the max I will do is a $60 feature (0.60 bet) as for the most part, feature buys are a loss and its an absolute miracle if I win more than 100x.

I can't understand how the providers charge 100x for buys though, some feature buys for some providers are 500x-1000x.

Any kind of feature buy that has a gamble mechanism should not be 100x. Book of Monsters for example is 100x and your forced to gamble. For the most part you land a letter and four scatters and your not going to take a Jack with five spins. Vampy Slots is another which is priced way too high. If you buy the 5 scatters for $57.60 it would be quite easy to lose 5-10 times trying to reach the 256x multiplier. You could spend $500 in gambling for it and the max win is only $1,000. The payout isn't worth the risk.

If I manage to spin in a bonus I'm generally pretty chuffed with one that pays 100x. Paying that for a bonus which could easily pay $0 seems excessive and I know its banned for people in the UK but personally I think its a good thing. Most bonus buys are losses. Just watch the Bandit.. 8/10 bonus buys is a loss and your relying on one of two buys to make it all back.

 

[dunover]

When I am just playing the slots I bet anywhere between $1 and $10 however if I buy a feature the max I will do is a $60 feature (0.60 bet) as for the most part, feature buys are a loss and its an absolute miracle if I win more than 100x.

I can't understand how the providers charge 100x for buys though, some feature buys for some providers are 500x-1000x.

Any kind of feature buy that has a gamble mechanism should not be 100x. Book of Monsters for example is 100x and your forced to gamble. For the most part you land a letter and four scatters and your not going to take a Jack with five spins. Vampy Slots is another which is priced way too high. If you buy the 5 scatters for $57.60 it would be quite easy to lose 5-10 times trying to reach the 256x multiplier. You could spend $500 in gambling for it and the max win is only $1,000. The payout isn't worth the risk.

If I manage to spin in a bonus I'm generally pretty chuffed with one that pays 100x. Paying that for a bonus which could easily pay $0 seems excessive and I know its banned for people in the UK but personally I think its a good thing. Most bonus buys are losses. Just watch the Bandit.. 8/10 bonus buys is a loss and your relying on one of two buys to make it all back.

Bonus buys are pretty much similar to base game play in that they have their own volatility.

A low-volatility one would be White Rabbit by BTG where the feature set-up will always give a chunk of the cost back, most features range between 40 and 130x bet so are not that brutal over time. Simply because you won't win more than say 6,000x barring a miracle.

Obviously the NLC ones and Netent's DoA2 are the opposite and the colossal prizes possible of 111,111x on the latter and up to 300,000x for the former's games are taken from the average payout which would be $96 for every $100 of purchases. So you get very frequent crap returns to pay for the monsters.

NLC for example have realized this hence them providing 'God Mode' and other variations on their menu. Trouble is, this increases costs of buys sometimes into the thousands-x-stake but reduces the odds against huge wins. High octane gambling, luckily banned here.

So in the example you gave for Scampy Party, the continuous losing gambles simply enables revenue for the game in order to provide a very high average win and quite frequent 5,000x's on the 256-multiplier feature when it hits. In a way, it's a disguised and not-so-subtle way of providing the 800x bet or 2400x bet feature entries for high prizes of NLC's games without the eye-watering headline costs in its menu.

 

[Reelsoffun]

Vampy Slots is another which is priced way too high. If you buy the 5 scatters for $57.60 it would be quite easy to lose 5-10 times trying to reach the 256x multiplier. You could spend $500 in gambling for it and the max win is only $1,000. The payout isn't worth the risk.

This is the thing though it clearly isn’t priced too high, that’s only your opinion. A better statement is that it’s outside of your risk appetite. I know people that risk 500 to win 1000 all the time, 500 on black anyone?

The fact is you “could” max win it from your first attempt ( yes unlikely, but possible ) and that is reflected in the feature buy cost, the feature buy cost is directly linked to the math, so while you consider it to be priced way too high, mathematically speaking it won’t be.

Look at it another way, if you played the game naturally how many games would you expect to play before hitting a 5 scatter? And what would you expect your average cost to be by that point? Would you expect to be up or down after that? Personally I would expect to be down in most cases with a small chance of being in profit, which is exactly what bonus buys end up being.

Here’s another way at looking at a bonus buy.

Let’s say I design a slot with 96% RTP.

The bonus buy is 100x

Internally when you buy a bonus, first it plays what would be the next 100 standard games in the background and calculates any wins from them inc any bonuses to get the total amount won.

Let’s say on this occasion it payed 80x so it then plays you out a bonus paying the “pre determined” 80x

Using this method it is quite easy to see and understand that most of the bonus buys will either be some kind of loss or a small win, and very few resulting in any meaningful profit due to still facing the in this example 4% house edge, ( sound familiar to anyone? )

As in my example you are effectively bulk buying the 100 games, in other words had you played the next 100 base games instead you would end at the same point, winning 80% it was just way slower.

Games that have different RTP’s on bonus buys ( often slightly better ) could be on a pool system like jammin jars, grid games etc again this is another way to do it but this isn’t an exhaustive list.

Different providers do it different ways but the results are the same you are subjecting yourself to higher house edges due to higher wagers, it’s that simple.

Bonus buys are without doubt a fast track to riches or ruin with the latter being the most likely outcome, but they are really no different to base game slots overall, play slots either way for any length of time and the result is the same.

 

[Nate]

This is the thing though it clearly isn’t priced too high, that’s only your opinion. A better statement is that it’s outside of your risk appetite. I know people that risk 500 to win 1000 all the time, 500 on black anyone?

The fact is you “could” max win it from your first attempt ( yes unlikely, but possible ) and that is reflected in the feature buy cost, the feature buy cost is directly linked to the math, so while you consider it to be priced way too high, mathematically speaking it won’t be.

Look at it another way, if you played the game naturally how many games would you expect to play before hitting a 5 scatter? And what would you expect your average cost to be by that point? Would you expect to be up or down after that? Personally I would expect to be down in most cases with a small chance of being in profit, which is exactly what bonus buys end up being.

Here’s another way at looking at a bonus buy.

Let’s say I design a slot with 96% RTP.

The bonus buy is 100x

Internally when you buy a bonus, first it plays what would be the next 100 standard games in the background and calculates any wins from them inc any bonuses to get the total amount won.

Let’s say on this occasion it payed 80x so it then plays you out a bonus paying the “pre determined” 80x

Using this method it is quite easy to see and understand that most of the bonus buys will either be some kind of loss or a small win, and very few resulting in any meaningful profit due to still facing the in this example 4% house edge, ( sound familiar to anyone? )

As in my example you are effectively bulk buying the 100 games, in other words had you played the next 100 base games instead you would end at the same point, winning 80% it was just way slower.

Games that have different RTP’s on bonus buys ( often slightly better ) could be on a pool system like jammin jars, grid games etc again this is another way to do it but this isn’t an exhaustive list.

Different providers do it different ways but the results are the same you are subjecting yourself to higher house edges due to higher wagers, it’s that simple.

Bonus buys are without doubt a fast track to riches or ruin with the latter being the most likely outcome, but they are really no different to base game slots overall, play slots either way for any length of time and the result is the same.

Interesting!

Do Bonus buys, Ante Bets, and the Base game have their own RTP's or are they all lumped together to form one overall RTP?

As an example, Pragmatic Play states that the Feature Buy has an RTP of xxx, the Ante Bet of xxx, and the base game xxx...

Nate

 

[dunover]

Interesting!

Do Bonus buys, Ante Bets, and the Base game have their own RTP's or are they all lumped together to form one overall RTP?

As an example, Pragmatic Play states that the Feature Buy has an RTP of xxx, the Ante Bet of xxx, and the base game xxx...

Nate

Yes, they do and the spread is tiny, you're talking thousandths of the overall RTP in difference normally, say 96.49 base, 96.54 ante-bet and 96.58 bonus buys. This is simply due to the maths required because ante-bet produces more features (taken from overall feature allocation of RTP) so will produce slight differences in base game RTP, especially if scatters pay anything or if they don't and base game returns are less frequent due to increased triggering spins.

In the case of bonus buys you are permanently playing in the feature part of the RTP obviously, say 30% so as reels and things vary from the base game, it will never totally match base game RTP. It feels like two different slots because if obtaining normal features and that 30% of RTP overall pays at 100% (in other words house edge derives from the base game only) you get a difference, as now the house edge comes from the bonus buys only therefore feature rounds. I've seen numerous YTers comment on this when buying bonuses, they seem to sense 'natural' triggers are better.

Of course, that's my observation based on just that, where's trancemonkey when you need him...?

 

[Reelsoffun]

Interesting!

Do Bonus buys, Ante Bets, and the Base game have their own RTP's or are they all lumped together to form one overall RTP?

Yes, as dunover said it’s effectively three different games or “modes” each with there own RTP, often only slightly different RTP.

Games that don’t show all the different RTPs in the help file are either made mathematically identical or are most likely just showing the lowest one in the game rules as they only have to show the minimum RTP to be compliant that I’m aware of.

 

[conker]

The points made by @dunover and @Reelsoffun seem to make a lot of sense. It would be great to have a slot developer / game studio confirm these.

I guess it may not be in the interest of the industry to offer too much clarity on how Bonus Buys work. Better to leave everyone speculating and making sure that 'Buy button' gets hit.

 

[Reelsoffun]

The points made by @dunover and @Reelsoffun seem to make a lot of sense. It would be great to have a slot developer / game studio confirm these.

I guess it may not be in the interest of the industry to offer too much clarity on how Bonus Buys work. Better to leave everyone speculating and making sure that 'Buy button' gets hit.

Unfortunately due to NDAs I can’t confirm more details than I already have, and for the same reasons I’m not sure you will get many slot devs or game studios confirming any more than I have on record but would love to be wrong. A lot of slot math and methods are closely guarded secrets.

While not everything can be brute forced worked out, there are many clues of some tactics that can become apparent and worked out given enough game round data.

 

[spindoctor99]

Unfortunately due to NDAs I can’t confirm more details than I already have, and for the same reasons I’m not sure you will get many slot devs or game studios confirming any more than I have on record but would love to be wrong. A lot of slot math and methods are closely guarded secrets.

While not everything can be brute forced worked out, there are many clues of some tactics that can become apparent and worked out given enough game round data.

This is unrelated to bonus buys but you may know the answer. We had another discussion regarding online blackjack (not live blackjack). Do you know if the result is predetermined ie once you press the deal button is the result a win or loss. No one seems to know if this is the case.

Thanks

 

[Reelsoffun]

I don’t know either, but that sounds an awful way to do it, but if that’s the case due to its deceptive nature should be shown in the help file if that’s what’s happening.

If I made an online blackjack game, it would be double deck minimum probably 4 or 6, with a shuffle after every hand ( to eliminate card counters ) and not the best rules, eg no re split aces etc

Which that in itself would make it pretty hard to win on, and can’t think of any reason that’s not the way they do work? And is totally why I would never play online RNG blackjack.