This level of additional specific detail could well be sufficient to convince someone, if they had previously suspected, that there would indeed be a lot of fiddly little bits.
Personally, I was optimistic before, and now I am significantly less optimistic. It looks more and more as though Pathfinder 2E will fall into the same trap that Pathfinder 1E did, where it primarily became a game about how to build a character.
It seems from what we've seen so far that, while character building will be a significant part of the game, it probably won't be as all-consuming in this edition. So far, the build choices we're seeing are:
- Ability Score Assignment at character creation
- Ancestry, Background, and Class choice at character creation
- Proficiency assignment at character creation
- Feat choice at character creation
- Spell choice at character creation
- Ability Score increases at certain levels (presumably)
- Proficiency increases at certain levels
- Feat choices at each level
- Spell choices at each level (presumably)
Bolded are character build options either not present in 5e, or that are made more frequently in PF2 than in 5e. That doesn't seem too bad to me. Lack of ways to customize a character after level 3 is one of the major critiques of 5e, and PF2 doesn't seem to be adding
that much more. If anything (and sorry to be the guy who keeps doing this, but...) it seems about on par with 4e in terms of character building. Which in my book is a great thing. 4e had a fantastic balance of customizability and usability in terms of character building, in my opinion.
What really made 3.5 and PF1 a nightmare of build planning, in my opinion, was absurdly long Feat chains (which they've said they are removing), skill points/ranks (which are being streamlined with the new Proficiency system), and Prestige Classes and their prerequisites. Prestige Classes being the worst offender, because you pretty much had to plan out your whole build from 1st level until the level you could finally start taking levels in the Prestige Class you actually wanted. And woe unto thee if you wanted to take levels in more than one prestige class.
We haven't seen yet how PF2 will handle Prestige Classes (if at all), so for me at least, it's too early to say for sure if this edition will be as much of a character building simulator as PF1 was, but the steps they've taken to streamline Feats and Proficiencies give me hope. Of course, the amount of character customization I want may be too much for some. Or too little for others. It's a tough tightrope to walk, but PF2 will probably have to err on the side of too much, since character customization is a big part of their brand identity.