I can definitely see how people who enjoyed the first season of the anime for its style may or may not feel the same way with the second season. As they said, this is a "different take" on Hayate, so they hope that will still loop in most of the first-season fans, but in this case they're also hoping to loop in some of the manga and more romance-oriented fans. There will certainly be some drop-off just based on people's preferences. But I do want to say that there's nothing wrong with anime-original viewers who preferred the first season's style!
For me personally, I only recently just started reading the manga (only the first volume), so the anime was my first exposure to the franchise. I guess I think of both seasons as complementary in many ways. The second series covers aspects of the show that we didn't get to see in the first, so if you take the series on a whole now, we get a much more "diverse" and "broad" Hayate world. I also have to say that, although I really liked the first series, the recent direction of the second series is a little bit more up my "usual" alley in terms of preferences. So I guess I have to admit that I prefer this style a little bit, but not a whole ton. All in all, I still think the more Hayate the better, and I'd take it in either "style".
