Paizo is probably using the same goalposts that spurred their initial development of Pathfinder: the survival of Paizo as a company. Pathfinder was intended as a stopgap measure to procure their company's survival in the absence of Dragon & Dungeon magazines. The success of Pathfinder was somewhat unexpected for them. I don't think that they are under any delusions about replicating the success of Pathfinder 1 because the market environment has changed.
I will take a more concerted effort to address your ranting with greater seriousness than you had in composing it. I know that you like to supply your own answers to your own questions that you have before even asking them, but just because Pathfinder 2 does not seem to be ticking off your boxes does not mean that it's not meeting the grade for others. I think that it's fairly clear that you want Pathfinder 2 to be something that it's not or what it even aims to be, an opinion which you betray in the bold. You want someone to make 5e Advanced. You have made that clear elsewhere. (insert links to many of the posts where you complain about wanting more player options and customization for 5e here
) And now you are pitching a conniption fit because Paizo is not dedicating its company resources for that purpose. You have some entitlement issues you need to take care of. If you want an upgrade path to 5e, then it's not Paizo's job as a company to do the work for you.
First, your final sentence ignores an obvious point. Paizo would be nothing without D&D and they almost were nothing when they lost it. Hence, why they developed Pathfinder in the first place. I don't think that Paizo wants their company placed into that sort of dependent situation again.
Second, "It's Pathfinder" will be a good enough answer for some. For you? Obiviously not. For others? Yes, because Paizo has built their brand and they have created their own quality adventure paths and setting materials. I believe that for some, the major draw of Pathfinder 2 will be similar to that of Pathfinder 1: it is built on the d20 3e chassis so there is familiarity in the basics. I am aware that D&D 5E is also built on the same chassis, but so was 4E and a variety of other different games (e.g., Arcana Evolved, 13th Age, Mutants & Masterminds, True20, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Castles & Crusaders, etc.). These games, however, unquestionably have different feels and tones, strengths and weaknesses, as well as mechanics. IMHO, 5E caters to a different sort of fantasy tone than both 3E and 4E, with its self-professed bounded accuracy being fairly telling in that regard. So even within the broader aesthetic of D&D fantasy, I believe that there is room for the sort of high epic fantasy to which Pathfinder 2 aspires.
Pathfinder 2 is definitely novel in comparison to Pathfinder 1, but I would not say that it is "unrecognizably different" because there are too many places where it is obviously "recognizably similar" in its design to Pathfinder 1 and approach to D&D-esque fantasy. If you have played Pathfinder beyond its initial offering, you can see the conceptual history for its developments. Pathfinder 2 - much like with 4e and 5e before it, though in different ways - will seek to address their own issues with their perceived flaws of the 3e d20 system. [MENTION=6776259]Haffrung[/MENTION] has already provided an intial list of some key selling points for some people.
