I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much damned hand wringing over something so inconsequential. But I must say the line of ‘why can’t Paizo just abandon its own silly game and produce some stuff for the system I like’ is kind of irrelevant.
While that does seem to have been the converstaion I think it's kind of missing the point. It's not about "what do I like or don't like". It's not about you. It's not about me. It's not about the original poster. It's about the original poster noticing that Paizo's market share and engagement in RPG related discussions, and engagement with 3PP have all flagged very noticeably so that even someone who isn't really paying all that much attention anymore (like me) can notice it. That has nothing whatsoever to do with any individual's taste in gaming and what kind of mechanics they like. Given that observation, it was a request to discuss what, if anything, could be done to address that situation, along with one proferred proposal for discussion.
The real on-topic responses would have addressed one of the two proposed topics, or spinoffs on them:
1) is the original premise flawed?—and admittedly, there's a little bit of discussion about that. But the "rebuttals" to the premise don't really address the obvious elephant in the room that Pathfinder's market share, as reported with what data we can gather, limited though it may be, is way down. And the engagement in forums (including here) and engagement with 3PPs is way down. Those are all clearly visible to anyone regardless of whatever nitpicky details about the rollplay VTT are going on, or whether or not Paizo is still hiring. (My sister once got hired at Circuit City literally three days before the entire corporation declared bankruptcy and closed all of their stores. Needless to say, she never actually started, and her getting a job offer wasn't indicative of financial health.) Is there an interesting discussion to be had around that premise that the OP proposed? I think so, but I can't see that this thread actually addressed it. In fact, ironically, it corroborates it in at least one small anecdotal way. I was googling differences in setting between Golarion 1e and 2e, and I thought for sure that that would have been a significant topic of discussion at ENworld. Instead, I got routed... to this thread.
2) The OP's secondary premise is that Pathfinder 2e's rather tepid apparent reception may be based on its mechanics, therefore he proposes some changes that he thinks would improve it. He made some specific references to WotC learning from 4e not to keep doubling down for too long on a system that's losing market share. Nobody's really addressed this; they've just kind of said, "don't split the player base." This seems a little bit of a facile piece of advice to me; Paizo's entire reason for being and the lever that they used to catapult to a position of major player in the market was based on the splintering of the player base that was already happening. Late era 3e was bleeding players left and right to the OSR and other games that weren't quite so cumbersome to run, and word of mouth online as it aged was certainly tipping towards a significant plurality of negative—even acknowledging that plenty of people were still playing it, and not complaining. But when 4e was announced, and then launched, and it wasn't what a significant portion of the player base wanted, the market was splintered, and it allowed for an opportunity for Paizo to jump in. If it wasn't for splintering the player base, there never could have been any Paizo.
But the other lesson to be learned here, was that WotC cleaned up their act and released a game that was much more big-tentish than 4e ever was, and seems to have brought a very large chunk of the prodigal sons back into the fold. And anecdotally, at least, it seems to have contributed to growing the tent, which back in the 2e, 3e and 4e era most gamers assumed was pretty much impossible. When that happened, it kinda seems like the whole reason for the Pathfinder system was taken away from them, but they haven't seemed to have noticed yet. To be honest, I was never sure why they didn't just keep going with the 3e/d20 OGL as it is. Based on book prices online and engagement with folks here and there, it certainly seemed that during the 4e era, a very significant plurality kept on playing 3e and buying used 3e books, so Pathfinder making what was essentially a "3.75" was needlessly splitting their potential player base. I know, I know—I remember the interviews, discussions, posts, whatever where they explained why they did that, but it
did split their potential base, and it also opened them up to exactly the situation that they're in now. Had they remained a company that supported the 3e SRD, they could have easily pivoted to supporting the 5e SRD once 4e withered and died. Instead, they created their own alternate SRD, and now that they're so invested in it, they seem unable to divorce themselves from thinking that they need their own SRD. Instead of Pathfinder 2e, I think it would have made more sense to say, essentially, "WotC got their act together and 5e was what 4e should have been, so now we can go back to supporting that the way that we supported 3e back in the day." I think their inability to step away from this system that they created that clearly doesn't have the pull that it really kind of needs to is a long-term losing strategy for Paizo. Had they simply published the SRD with less investment in modifying it, it would have been much easier for them to have walked away from it again, instead of feeling so emotionally and financially invested in a new kinda sorta 3e-ish system.
And to head off the inevitable emotional projecting from the peanut gallery before it shows up, no, I don't have any particular horse in this race. I don't play 5e, I don't play 4e, I don't play 3e, and I don't play PF 1e or PF 2e either. I play a customized version of Microlite, and I have no need for any other system ever again in my life. So I make these comments as someone watching what appears to be happening from a business perspective, without any particular ulterior motive to get some kind of product that I want out of it. (Although admittedly, our data is pretty scanty, and we may well be misreading what it seems to be saying.) I've said goodbye to both WotC and Paizo, at least in terms of system, long ago, and I'll probably gradually lose any interest in their other stuff soon too, although the premise of the book
Corporate Cancer is more likely to be the cause of that than the system. I've already kissed both systems, or anything even all that closely related to either of them, goodbye long ago and made my peace with the split. And I even got to keep the house and the kids, and am making no alimony payments!
Anyhoo; I think that would have been an interesting discussion, and that's clearly what the OP was trying to spark. Kinda disappointing that we didn't get it.