SMITE 2 devs defend 'generous' Legacy Gems refund for all players

SMITE 2 is finally on its way after a decade of God-on-God skirmishes, with Titan Forge Games revealing the sequel at the final SMITE Esports World Championships final.

The announcement reveals an upgrade to Unreal Engine 5 alongside a wealth of changes to the God pool and the Conquest map, with the sequel designed to encourage more diversity as items become universal and each role becomes much more fluid on the map.

But, amid all the sunshine and rainbows, there is one grey area. All of your skins purchased in SMITE since its inception in 2014, including those crossovers with Avatar and Transformer, are not making the journey to the new promised land - being left behind.

SMITE 2 announces Legacy Gems instead of transferring skins 

Whether you enjoy your Omnitech Odin or can't resist toning down Fenrir to Chompy Chibi, all of these skins will stay in the past, and SMITE 2 will wipe the slate clean.

"Existing content from SMITE 1 will not directly transfer to SMITE 2. But don't worry, just because the content doesn't directly transfer over, doesn't mean we aren't rewarding loyal players in SMITE 2 for their time, effort, and accomplishments," revealed Titan Forge Games General Manager Travis Brown in the reveal.

Instead, SMITE 2 will introduce Legacy Gams and Divine Legacy, which will serve almost as refunds for all money and time poured into the first title.

Legacy Gems will see you automatically rewarded with all of your Gems accumulated over the ten-plus years of SMITE (both purchased and earned) and will be in your account when the game launches. Even if you've bought 1,000,000 Gems over the years, you'll get every last gem back, and that can be doubled with the Founders Pack. 

Divine Legacy will also come to SMITE 1 in the meantime, which will honour each year of SMITE gameplay so far and allow you to unlock new skins and badges in SMITE 2 to show off your prowess throughout the years.

The developers revealed that it would take 246 years worth of manpower to transfer all 1600 skins over with reworks and updates to the appearance in correlation with UE5, saying, "We couldn't do that".

SMITE 2 developers defend 'generous' Legacy Gems

After making this "hard call", Titan Forge Games Executive Producer Alex Cantatore exclusively told GGRecon that this was the toughest element of tackling the sequel.

"This was probably the most challenging piece of approaching SMITE 2 in the first place," Cantatore said in an interview with GGRecon. "We wanted to make sure that we had a good plan for this and we went back and forth on it a lot of times internally."

Already, the developers have pitched this to pre-existing long-term players, which gained a lot of positive feedback. "There are some groups of players that are NDA that we can talk to about things that we include in our development process, and we've run several versions of this by those players," Cantator continued.

"We weren't happy with the plan until we got to a level where they said, 'Wow, this is actually more generous than I thought that you guys would be able to be'."

There will also be the opportunity for players to continue their "legacy" with Mastery stars, which will allow the older and more devoted players to flex their God Mastery Levels.

"The one thing that players are going to care the most about is that you'll be able to see your SMITE 1 God mastery level on the stars in SMITE 2. You can still show off that you were a baller in SMITE 1, that you were an 8-star Athena, for example," Cantatore added.

SMITE 2 developers anticipate pushback on Legacy Gems

But, this might not cut the mustard for every player, as some will understandably be rather miffed that their favourite outfits won't be making the port. Titan Forge Games knows this, acknowledging that not everyone will be happy, but hopefully, the quality of the sequel will also serve as a buffer in that argument.

"I think we expect that there's going to be some players who are definitely upset that not everything is transferred over, but we really did everything we could to be as generous as possible," Cantatore told GGRecon.

"We really want to make sure people hopefully feel respected for their time and money and their achievements, no matter what level of player you are. In the most recent rounds we did with our NDA creators and Olympians, they were like, 'Guys, this is awesome,' so hopefully, we get that reaction on Friday.

"I would expect there's going to be some naysayers and there's going to be some people that disagree, but look at the game. It's clearly the next level of SMITE, it's a true sequel, and when you look at what some true sequels do, they don't do anything. I think we're trying to be as generous as we can possibly be."

So, whether you were the most devoted player in SMITE 1, or will come to SMITE 2 as a brand-new fan hoping to capitalise on the level playing field, Titan Forge Games hopes there will be more than enough rewards to please everyone. If not, the game will speak for itself.