That might be what he’s is saying but to provide context on what is actually happening to a non-pf2e player:For perspective I am a 5e player and have no PF2 experience so take this with a grain of salt. The take away message I got from his video was that because of PF2 crunchiness and very robust feat system, this tends to player characters being over specialized which leads to characters being one trick ponies in combat whereas in 5e because it's less crunchy mechanically with less character customization, characters tend not to be as specialized which leads to more viable options in combat. Plus if both systems are kind of repetitive in combat, might as well go with the less complex system.
- pathfinder 2e has a large amount of mechanical support for encounters that are NOT straight combat (that is a monster appears and attacks until defeated, final fantasy style).
- Cody runs only straight combat encounters.
- thus the system feels over-designed or too complex to him because of #1 and #2.
- since he only runs straight combat encounters his players know pretty much what to do and so ‘optimize’ to face it. He calls this the “illusion of choice” and blames it on the system and not himself from #2.
- when people pointed out the above and suggested he change #2 (which would also fix #3 and #4), he felt personally attacked as not being creative and lashed out.
- he then used a badly done and cherry-picked example to try and prove point #4, completely ignoring the fact that the #4 stems from #2 and running a variety of encounters instead of straight combat after straight combat would fix the issue.