Well to be fair Smite has provided an extremely fair pricing model and continuous development on the product for 10 years. The recipe was a solid one that has maintained a fairly strong following for a decade which can not be said about a plethora of games. Its a 1 time fee of like 30 dollars to access all content/all gods for life...thats a pretty damn solid return on investment even as a casual. Not saying they are perfect by any means but its not just a new graphics engine. They have re-imagined a variety of components, stats, etc but why blow up the recipe when its an enjoyable experience.
I've transitioned from a fairly hard core smite player to casual with the wife when we get the itch but the fact she can play and actually enjoy herself and do a decent job is very appreciative while still having high skill ceilings. I've probably had 6-7 accounts over the years and its still probably the best return on investment i've had in 37 years of gaming. Looking forward to see what they are going to do it and how their audience grows/shrinks as they re-introduce it to the market. Watching some of their dev stuff one good thing is going to be the ability to churn out more gods/content significantly faster due to the advancements in tech and change in strategy.
Plenty of gamers want the "new new" but others are also drawn to similar experiences with just adjustments to improve the game. But if you think your 30 dollars for 10 years of solid experience and access to full content/gods wasn't worth the money then by all means don't buy smite 2 but lets not come across as a fucktard by thinking they haven't been generous to their player base and don't have the right to charge for the significant changes and investment in development. Plenty of horrible companies out there that fuck us in the dick hole with massive dlc prices on single player games that are hardly any amount of content. This is not that...
Also they have at least provided some path ways and value from existing skins/transitioning so its not just double charging for what you have got.