First off, I want to make it clear that
Homerun Battle 3D is one of my all-time favorite pick-up-and-play games for my iPhone. It is well worth every penny, but Com2uS may have gone a bit overboard with their recent update to the game, which adds some extremely expensive in-app purchase items that seem to give players an unfair advantage.
Homerun Battle 3D was recently updated to v1.3, which according to the App Store description, adds over 100 new items and new complete uniform sets. They even went the extra mile and included officially licensed
DeMarini equipment sets. Like I stated before, I really enjoy the game and have played my fair share of it, so I simply assumed all of these new items were merely going to cost me a lot more of my time collecting enough gold balls to obtain them. But instead, upon launching the game this morning, I found out that these new items weren't going to cost me time, they were going to cost me real money.
Now don't get me wrong, I am all for developers charging whatever they feel they deserve for their work, but $19.99 is not a price I am willing to pay for an outfit. Of course, $19.99 is on the absolute highest end of the spectrum, but none of the paid outfits can be obtained by collecting gold balls, which means if I am not willing to fork out the cash, I can't have them. The items that are part of an outfit also can't be obtained separately.
Fair enough, but some of the paid outfits boost your stats dramatically, which gives players who are willing to spend the money but not willing to put the time in an unfair advantage. This is especially difficult to swallow since the game is geared towards online competitive play.
It's not like this update is going to make me stop playing the game, but would it be too much to ask to have those same outfits be unlockable with gold balls as well? Com2uS could make the amount nearly impossible to reach, so only the most dedicated of players could obtain them. Otherwise, just purchase them.
I know it's just a game, but it is a cause for concern. Hopefully developers don't get too in-app purchase happy now that the feature is being given a lot more attention. Let's keep it reasonable.
