Well you have half of what's in now. By release 2 packs will probably get you 20% of the total heroes, if that. Paying 50bucks for that few feels pretty shitty.
They went with the greedy choice, which is copying the LoL system, which is the greediest of the genre. I hate it but I can also reason that it's not like EA mobile bad either, it's just the greedy choice, every champion has to be bought individually, the free rotation is relatively small and only change once a week, you cannot test champions, you also need to buy runes with the same ressource. There's sales and bundles(well not that many last time I played but they had some) but that goes into spending actual money on the game. I don't disagree it's a good ratio of $ vs time but it's still $ and the barrier of entry as a new player is big(and gets bigger over time).
Sure as a new player you'll probably just enjoy playing the free rotation, leveling up, unlocking rune pages and shit. You don't hit the barrier right away, it eases you into it. Once you start mastering the game though, get to 30, have a good amount of runes and start doing ranked is when the barrier hits you in the face with a giant fuck you. You need champions for each role and you probably need the meta champions if you don't want to get into an argument half of the game right from the pickphase. You need at least 2 roles worth of champions. You start mastering the game but you cannot master champions without buying them first and if you're really into the game, you quickly reach a point where it's not viable to use IP only on champions. It's just a pretty shitty feeling at that point, but some people avoid that because they really like a small pool of champions and only play these or because they only play a single role or shit like that, so it varies depending on people. And a lot of people are casuals, they never reach that point, they never play ranked or play ranked "for fun" and are forever bronze scrubs, they play their 1win a day in coop then play 1 or 2 games in ranked and log off for the day and then they notice they have enough IP to buy a champion and look at the list wondering what to buy, making a post on reddit for suggestions.
Still I personally don't like it, but I can accept it's not the worst it could be, it is however the worst there is currently, at least from the shit I follow. HoN, and someone might need to correct me since I'm going off vague memories here, has every heroes unlocked and you only pay to get early access to the new heroes(obviously not the same price as what you pay in lol). The rest is skins and announcers and shit like that. Smite has a rotation and the same systems, however you can also decide to pay the massive sum of TWENTY FIVE dollars to unlock every god. Every future ones too. Dota is dota so whatever, can't compare the steam workshop shit and all but obviously as everyone knows, every hero is unlocked from the start. I don't really know any other "mobas" so my comparison stops here, but between those 4, which are probably the biggest in the genre, LoL has by far the worst system. But also potentially the one that makes the most money and is the most successful(well the game is, not the system).
I'd be extremely pleased if they just went with the Smite way. Make it 80bucks if you want, call it HotS Collector Edition, and unlock every hero now and forever. And I'd be fine with that. But in the LoL system, 80 bucks get you like 1/8th of the roster, possibly more if you buy only the low cost champions/buy only during sales. I don't think they will however, there's just too much money to be made. I just hope they adjust their system to be less shit and to not punish people who play a lot, or at least not punish people who play well. Hearthstone does it relatively decently, if you can maintain a good arena ratio win rate, you can play forever and accumulate cards extremely fast. If you're playing like shit though, you don't accumulate gold very fast at all and you're mostly going to rely on the daillies and you don't unlock shit. I kinda like that system, hope they do something similar.
