CapnZapp
Legend
Instead of trying talk in the two active threads at once, let me say it here instead! 
Disclaimer and trigger warning: I have strong opinions on the various D&D editions. Discussing PF2 becomes watered down and meaningless if I can't say what I really think. So let me state right off the bat that if you like monsters in 5E, class balance in Pathfinder or much of anything in 4E I would ask you to please find a different thread. Or at least keep in mind that an attack on your favorite game or mechanism is not an attack on you. Thank you.
My core irk with Pathfinder 2 is - who was this game made for?
It clearly improves upon 5E in many regards. Chiefly monsters and encounters are revitalized and again dangerous and exciting. And of course it clearly intends to offer much more choice for players. Robust support for a magic item economy (as opposed to how gold is worthless in 5E). Like 5E (and very much unlike 3E) it tries to make life easier by not forcing Dungeon/Game Masters create monsters using PC rules, and it also attempts to balance martial and spellcasting classes.
In other regards it comes across as completely clueless of 5E's success or even existence. It is very rules heavy. I do not think anyone would say I am unfair if I characterize it as "a wall of feats". It gorges itself on the littlest +1's and -1's. There are literally dozens of conditions. In other words, it utterly lacks 5E's newbie friendliness (no matter how much its defenders try telling you everything is "organized"; the game still is way crunchier than anyone needed or wanted).
So the legions of new ttrpg recruits will likely not be able to handle PF2, or even want to.
At the same time, it is 100% incompatible with Pathfinder 1. You simply cannot recreate the same characters - class abilities, feats and even numbers are entirely different. (Obviously, that there isn't yet support for a gazillion prestige classes is not a dig against the system).
And the thing about player choices... well, it turns out much of it is is just window-dressing, I'm afraid. Chargen is curiously inflexible, yet very fiddly. You can't impact the fundamentals - your attack bonus, AC and saves are locked in by your level 1 choice of class. Yet you are asked to a swim in a sea of feat choices.
Most (though not all) feats change very little about your character, and thus is of no help anchoring your characterization or portrayal. In short, you're asked to make choices which ultimately doesn't change anything; they just shifting the numbers to where they should have been in the first place. One way of this is to call it "balanced" and "you can't make a wrong choice". Another is "your choices don't matter".
Finally, in some regards it doubles down on the things we stopped playing 4E for. To some extent WotC is also guilty of this. It is easy to spam backgrounds and subclasses that mostly just rearrange the same old class abilities around. You can put an intern on the job; no real dev experience needed. But mostly I would have hoped it was a bad memory from the 4E era. Not so - this obnoxious design philosophy is alive and well in PF2.
Do you really need to put a name on each every combination of two feats? Not to mention how instead of having one feat that says "you can use your good skill for this action" Pathfinder 2 clearly intends to have individual feats for each and every skill-action combo. What this is? Spam. Nothing more, nothing less. It's like eating diet candy bars instead of the real thing: actual new rules crunch with new rules mechanisms.
Same with magic items, which are way too similar to the bland and boring magic item design of 4E. 3E and 5E does magic items right - both editions sport magic items that really have impact, the way magic should work. In PF2 probably the worst example would be Talismans, which are among the most petty and miserly item designs I have ever seen: for a far too high cost and much too much prep you get the tiniest bonus for the shortest time possible. Just blergh.
So, who was this game made for?
As far as I can see, it was made for... dunno? People that like restricted and fiddly characters with verbose names for the littlest things, 4E style, but with d20 variety in monsters...? Pathfinder and 3E holdouts that finally get to break LFQW (Linear Fighter Quadratic Wizard)...? But if you still play those games, you are likely not bothered by how multiclassed spellcasters rule the world! And what do the huge 5E crowds get? Not.... much of anything at all?
---
I for one cannot fathom why Paizo did not create a game that caters to 5E sensibilities but "gives more". More player-side charbuild crunch. Better monster support for the DM.
But a game that is fundamentally more like easy 5E than byzantine d20. And certainly a game that actually tries hard to NOT look like 4E.
Why, Paizo. Why?
Disclaimer and trigger warning: I have strong opinions on the various D&D editions. Discussing PF2 becomes watered down and meaningless if I can't say what I really think. So let me state right off the bat that if you like monsters in 5E, class balance in Pathfinder or much of anything in 4E I would ask you to please find a different thread. Or at least keep in mind that an attack on your favorite game or mechanism is not an attack on you. Thank you.
My core irk with Pathfinder 2 is - who was this game made for?
It clearly improves upon 5E in many regards. Chiefly monsters and encounters are revitalized and again dangerous and exciting. And of course it clearly intends to offer much more choice for players. Robust support for a magic item economy (as opposed to how gold is worthless in 5E). Like 5E (and very much unlike 3E) it tries to make life easier by not forcing Dungeon/Game Masters create monsters using PC rules, and it also attempts to balance martial and spellcasting classes.
In other regards it comes across as completely clueless of 5E's success or even existence. It is very rules heavy. I do not think anyone would say I am unfair if I characterize it as "a wall of feats". It gorges itself on the littlest +1's and -1's. There are literally dozens of conditions. In other words, it utterly lacks 5E's newbie friendliness (no matter how much its defenders try telling you everything is "organized"; the game still is way crunchier than anyone needed or wanted).
So the legions of new ttrpg recruits will likely not be able to handle PF2, or even want to.
At the same time, it is 100% incompatible with Pathfinder 1. You simply cannot recreate the same characters - class abilities, feats and even numbers are entirely different. (Obviously, that there isn't yet support for a gazillion prestige classes is not a dig against the system).
And the thing about player choices... well, it turns out much of it is is just window-dressing, I'm afraid. Chargen is curiously inflexible, yet very fiddly. You can't impact the fundamentals - your attack bonus, AC and saves are locked in by your level 1 choice of class. Yet you are asked to a swim in a sea of feat choices.
Most (though not all) feats change very little about your character, and thus is of no help anchoring your characterization or portrayal. In short, you're asked to make choices which ultimately doesn't change anything; they just shifting the numbers to where they should have been in the first place. One way of this is to call it "balanced" and "you can't make a wrong choice". Another is "your choices don't matter".
Finally, in some regards it doubles down on the things we stopped playing 4E for. To some extent WotC is also guilty of this. It is easy to spam backgrounds and subclasses that mostly just rearrange the same old class abilities around. You can put an intern on the job; no real dev experience needed. But mostly I would have hoped it was a bad memory from the 4E era. Not so - this obnoxious design philosophy is alive and well in PF2.
Do you really need to put a name on each every combination of two feats? Not to mention how instead of having one feat that says "you can use your good skill for this action" Pathfinder 2 clearly intends to have individual feats for each and every skill-action combo. What this is? Spam. Nothing more, nothing less. It's like eating diet candy bars instead of the real thing: actual new rules crunch with new rules mechanisms.
Same with magic items, which are way too similar to the bland and boring magic item design of 4E. 3E and 5E does magic items right - both editions sport magic items that really have impact, the way magic should work. In PF2 probably the worst example would be Talismans, which are among the most petty and miserly item designs I have ever seen: for a far too high cost and much too much prep you get the tiniest bonus for the shortest time possible. Just blergh.
So, who was this game made for?
As far as I can see, it was made for... dunno? People that like restricted and fiddly characters with verbose names for the littlest things, 4E style, but with d20 variety in monsters...? Pathfinder and 3E holdouts that finally get to break LFQW (Linear Fighter Quadratic Wizard)...? But if you still play those games, you are likely not bothered by how multiclassed spellcasters rule the world! And what do the huge 5E crowds get? Not.... much of anything at all?
---
I for one cannot fathom why Paizo did not create a game that caters to 5E sensibilities but "gives more". More player-side charbuild crunch. Better monster support for the DM.
But a game that is fundamentally more like easy 5E than byzantine d20. And certainly a game that actually tries hard to NOT look like 4E.
Why, Paizo. Why?
