I'm honestly pretty far from a Paizo fan. I have been pretty vocal about how much I hate PF2e, to the point where it was barely even on-topic. But this is a good game. It does have problems, a lot of them, but they have essentially nothing to do with your criticisms, because basically nothing that you are calling out based on your theorycrafting is actually a problem in practice.
PF2 is such a shitshow. PF may have big issues, from massive bloat to inconsistencies, to the way they change shit and pretend it was meant like that all along, to how they just churn shit out, including base classes in some regards, to everything-is-a-feat, to pathetic attempts to balance-by-gamefying, but man, PZF2 rrally shows how much Paizo is in the toilet, design-wise. It's not just that they're bad - they have always been sorta bad, even since Dragon Magazine - but that they've actually seemingly managed to get
worse, not just design-wise, but also in their writing, probably due to the entire studio now being made up of absolute fucking crazies and trannies and
literally crazy people.
PF2 just seem like the symptom of a disease. Too bad the paidrones are slurping that shit up like it's mother's milk and can't imagine playing a "dead" system, as if that has any meaning in the context of a table, especially with a system like Pathfinder, which has enough content to keep a table going for a decade, easily, if for some reason someone is autistic enough to only ever play PF. Imagine being brainlet enough to only watch TV-shows that are in production, because other shows are "dead". Fucking hell.
Personally, I am still stunned that someone whose flagship game only exists because 4e was such a fuckup and complete abandonment of a previous system decided that what their next game really needs to be is more like 4e and completely abandon their previous system. It's like seeing a colossal trainwreck and saying "Hold my beer!" in a southern accent. I do think you are being unnecessarily hard on PF fans though. Sure, there are some real idiots out there, but I've been looking over their forums while playing the playtest, and by far the most popular threads there were those that really skewered PF2 flaws, as well as those where players / DMs declare giving up on Playtest and PF2 as it is now. Of course, that was before Paizo started locking any such thread.
When I say paidrones, I don't mean "PF fans". I mean, I think that PF (and D&D in general) is overall a pretty trash system, with a wide range of flaws, but much like aMcDonalds burger, I'll still eat it once in a while, and I can see the appeal, especially with the wealth of material and the theorycrafting. After all, my main game I'm playing right now is 3.5, and I'm planning to GM a Pathfinder game soon™, as well. I immensely enjoy the "character creation minigame" of Pathfinder (more than 3.5), and I love doing optimization to make cool ideas work (although not for min/max/powergaming purposes), and unless you're trying to do stupid shit and have a GM that isn't autistic, the game(s) aren't nearly as broken "in play" as some people would claim, because yeah, sure, wizards *can* do everything, but no you *can't* rest in the middle of this dungeon, etc. Nevermind that most players that genuinely want to roleplay (and why would you play with those that do not?) generally want to stick to given themes and tropes and character ideas.
But paidrones.. paidrones aren't "PF fans". I know PF fans, and they usually have no trouble shitting on Paizo or discussing the issues of Pathfinder, but much like me, they don't consider them big enough issues to make the game unplayable or whatever.
Paidrones are those autistic pieces of shit the vigorously defend everything Paizo does, slurping the assholes of the increasingly degenerate and frankly
clinically deranged development team(s) as if their lives depends on it, rejecting any critical feedback and refusing to give relevant feedback themselves for fear of upsetting their lords, because bad
words are somehow worse than bad
actions. They are the people that genuinely are considering making the move to PF2 not because of the inherent merits of PF2, but because they are retarded enough to label a roleplaying game, something by it's very nature dependant on books and imagination and free agents acting in concert to form private groups exchanging ideas and playing games without the involvment of developers in any way whatsoever,
dead, simply because it's no longer in development. Paidrones also tend to be the worst kind of faggots and platformers and sceners, and people that have no interest in or ability to gauge rules, because to them, "the community" is more important than the actual hobby, and the rules are ultimately irrelevant, which is also likely why they have no issues with PF2, which playtests have shown pretty conclusively - when encounters are played to the best of the involved creature's abilities, many of them result in unconditional party wipes, but the majority of feedbaxk does not mirror this, because most of the testers are not even interested in stress-testing such aspects, let alone risk killing their players, since someone might get "upset".
Paidrones are
not just "PF fans". They are the fanboys and the fangirls of Paizo, and like Paizo itself, they are a cancer.
how is the game now? wait until 1.1? what about 1.1. beta test?
One can play relatively safely in the early chapters. There are a couple of bugs (technical and quest), but nothing major, as far as I can tell.
If you play reasonably slowly (because you e.g. have a life, or something), chances are good that the last chapters will be in a good enough shape, too, once you reach them. At least that's what I'm aiming for personally.
But if you are not super eager to start right away, I guess you can just as well wait until 1.1 + the first couple of hotfixes are out.
They still haven't fixed the naiad quest, despite it seeming to just be a fucked trigger, easily fixed, especially since the quests is self-contained in a single area, more or less. Literally unplayable, unless you're chaotic evil or something.
