The problme isn't that not sever yoke sees them the problem is being shouted down and told becuse someone we dosnt have them they are not there...
Nobody has said that you do not have these problems, or perceive these problems. The disagreement is to why.
Let me explain
I have friends who I used to love gaming with that now only plat PF so I would love to play wwith them them so when I saw this thread it was a light of hope that has become a nightmare
Now, its posts like this which suggest a great deal of animosity towards the game itself. A person who was not aware of your actual fondness for Pathfinder might be tempted to read a great deal of anger into your description of your situation, a suggestion perhaps that you blame the game (and in other posts the OGL and Paizo itself) for the gulf that has arisen between you and your friends. Now, as you have said that you actually like Pathfinder and Paizo, we know that is not true. But I thought some awareness of how posts like this reads to other people might be beneficial to you.
In all honesty, it is really beyond the ken and power of those posting in this thread to solve such a social problem for you, especially as you want advise and counsel as to mechanics. If your friends are happy with Pathfinder, there is no magic rules change which is going to suddenly make them change their opinion and chances are good that what you might perceive as a fix would derail their enjoyment of the game. As this thread shows, there is not universal acceptance of what is a bug and what is a feature.
It appears to me, with only a limited understanding of your situation, based on the posts you have made, that what you are actually looking for is a compromise game system that both you and your once-game-friends can enjoy together.
I am yet to hear an answer to may of the "problems" brought up here...
1) unbalanced progression. This is a big catch all of problems, weather you believe in lfqw or not, there is something here you must admit. It is possible to have 2 groups of PCs that are the same level going into the same dungeon, and be vastly different power levels. If group 1 is a power gamed wizard a pretty powered druid, a decent made gunslinger, and a multi classed power gamed twink, and group 2 is a fighter a rogue, a ranger and a paliden you could watch group 1 take less damage in the entire dungeon then group 2 takes in the first fight.... not so bad in different tables, but very bad when mixed.
Granted that unbalanced progression can be a problem when mixed at the same table in the extreme. Looking for the cause of this problem is not difficult and it can be summed up in one word: options.
More options is always going to increase the potentiality for imbalance. But options, and plenty of them, is a feature of Pathfinder. The only real "fix" for this is a new game with less options. Assuming you don't want a new game, as has been stated already earlier in the thread, the only way to mitigate this as is involves either player choice (players trying to make choices that keep them relatively in line with each other) or DM control (DMs who limit options to a palette suitable for their game). The last is my preferred method. I nix gnome monks and I don't allow anything non-core without permission.
Player wise, I am also blessed with players who are cooperative, helping each other find those moments when they can shine. It really makes the game more fun when players work together.
1a) I still want to hear an argument for why wizards and clerics, a commonly held high powered set of classes needed to be given MORE class features, I'm pretty sure you could have cut there power and still left them 2 of the best classes in the game, but they chose to up them instead...
They were made more flavorful. That is all.
2) Legacy issues. Now you can argue that he unbalanced progression is a legacy issue in and of it self, but this goes a bit deeper then that, and it really needed it's own bullet point. Trying to keep pathfinder backwards compatible enough, left it full of issues that people had there own house rules for, that now need readdressing. It is the most surprising flaw I found back in 2010... It is so close to being 3e that it has a lot of the flaws, but different enough that my fixes needed to be reworked...
This sounds, to be honest, like a personal issue and a personal taste issue. But if you were willing to do the work to make 3e into the game that worked for you, why the reluctance to do it again?
3) Abstract meta features. Love it or Hate it, pathfinder classes are just as full of gamest parts as 4e was. I laugh when people tell me that the 4e fighter come and get it is worse then an alchemist that can only use potions on himself, or a gunslinger that would fit right next to any class in 4e. One of the strong points of 3e (or so I was told) was how simiulationist it was, but it seams half of the new classes they made where gamest... witch confuses the whole system.
This doesn't sound like a problem with the game but more of a personal disagreement you have with the opinions of others. Its not something that can be fixed mechanically. It is very much a social issue that has to be addressed socially.
4) Splat book compatibility (AKA the money grab) remember how in bullet 2 I said they had changed enough to remove house rules, they also made changes to everyclass... and most feats. So any class race or feat from a non open source from wotc needs to be reworked to fit pathfinder... now to some that means it is just a new edition, but since it was sold atleast at first as a continuation, it annoys me that I have a few $100 worth of books that dont' work out of the box... Example: Warlock is one of my favorite classes but I have never met a PF GM that will let me play one. Bo9S was my favorite book from 3.5, followed closely by the second complete arcane, but both need to be tossed out in PF...
It has been said but it bares repeating. This is not a problem with Pathfinder. It is a problem with WotC and their failure to make their game fully open. Their is no solution for this,... except post the parts of WotC 3x that you like somewhere and have somebody rework it for you (unofficially) so you can use them.
Now the issue of whether a GM will let you use these things or not is not a mechanical issue. It's a social issue and it must be solved socially.
