The only difference between what you’re suggesting and what we’re suggesting is that your approach explicitly enumerates the trade-off instead of leaving it up to the GM to decide. If I say, “you can do (some activity) with a cost, and the feat lets you do it free,” and you say, “the rules let you do some activity, and the feat gives you a bonus while doing it,” what’s the difference? The cost has been shifted, but there’s still functionally a cost. The only difference is in how it’s accounted.
That’s only the case if you take it that way. I don’t think the system necessitates running it the way you claim it does. If you let someone do something at a cost, and a skill feat lets them do it for free, you haven’t invalidated the skill feat by your affordance. Yes, maybe now it’s less valuable in a strict sense, but if the game is more fun for everyone, then isn’t that a good thing?
On the other hand, if the players hate that and prefer you don’t do it, then where’s the problem? They don’t want you to be a permissive GM. They want you to take a very rigid approach to adjudicating the system that preserves (though I would argue increases) the value of their feat choices. Maybe it makes for a miserable experience, but that’s what they asked for and received.
It does tell you.
Crawl tells you how fast you move (5′ in one action).
Climb indicates in its requirements you must have both hands free.
Leap and
Long Jump tell you how far you can jump (Leap up to 10′ and Long Jump up to your speed based on the DC). Again, that’s how exception-based design works: you follow the general rule until you something brings the exception into play (a feat, a spell, the GM, etc).
They don't tell you how you get rid of these very severe and artificial restrictions. PF2 is a game where even high-level characters suffer from inexplicably harsh limitations - it comes across as a game where high-level heroes aren't trusted to do simple things: like crawl (or squeeze or jump etc) at more than a snail's pace.
At level 1 this might not be a big issue given how limited characters are otherwise. At level 10 or 20 it sticks out like a sore thumb. Having to find and take a specific feat just to get rid of a borderline-unplayable restriction is not a solution since it is no solution at all: if you pick quick crawler you can't afford to take quick squeezer, and if you pick quick squeezer you can't afford to pick quick climber. (Names might vary. I can't be arsed to remember the names of these obnoxious little pesky feats)
The core issue is that the game is incredibly ungenerous. What should be given out for free has been reserved for Paizo's design space. At every turn, Paizo has chosen to not just hand out something to everybody (that is sufficiently experienced and/or skilled), but instead to create this exasperating feats mini-game, thus ensuring nobody gets to ever feel whole.
It is unreasonable to ask a player to devote all his feat choices just to get rid of stupid limits that should not have been there in the first place, and are only there for Paizo to be able to brag about loads of options.
Options whose entire purpose of existance is only to negate or reduce artificial or reductive limitations are not solutions, they are problems.
I am arguing Paizo chose just about the shittiest solution to the problem imaginable: they wanted loads of options, but did not want to hand out actual agency for players to truly impact their characters, so they went the 4E nickel and dime route: they offer loads of "options" but very few that actually make a real difference.
And in this case, "options" that only allow you to act like a real hero could, unburdened by artificial and exceedingly harsh limitations.
That is not a case of "it's just a small difference between what you discuss and we discuss".
This is a fundamental issue to the core of the game design. It permeates the entire product, and it is one of the worst aspects of the game, that I maintain I need to rightly criticize.
Suggesting you can fix this by simply... ignoring what the feats do and the limits they alleviate... feels so reductive and unconstructive.
If we aren't allowed to criticize any game rules simply on grounds on "you can simply not use it if you don't like it" then you don't allow any meaningful critical discussion of any game ruleset ever.
Of course we must be able to say that Paizo's balance is derived in a large part on the assumption players and GMs obey the multitudinous niggling senseless little restrictions. Pointing this out to prospective players - without defending or dismissing it - is valuable consumer information.
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