Bobson wrote:

I entirely understand wanting to push the rules and see how far is too far, and where they are going to break. That said, my group was begging me to wrap up the playtest and go back to our Mummy's Mask game by the end. I had high hopes for PF2 last summer, but the playtest burnt through a lot of my trust in Paizo's vision. Quote: The rest of the design team and I are going to be a little quiet over the next couple of months as we finalize parts of the game and get it ready to go to the printer. Once that hard work is done, you can expect us to start showing off the final version of the game. I think this is the worst thing you can possibly do for those of us who left the playtest with a bad taste. Instead of letting that opinion sit for the next several months, post about problems that were identified and the kinds of thing you're considering to fix them. It doesn't need to be a final "Here's what PF2 will have!" preview, but just insight into "Here's something that was identified as a problem, why we think it was problematic, and how we're thinking of fixing it."

Yeah, I hate to be negative in a thread like this, but this is the move I was afraid of. I think there is the basis for a great system here, but my whole group had a bad time with the playtest and eventually imploded in frustration during the beginning of part 7. In particular, the impression that this was a traditional test, where it's close to the final version caused a lot of despair due to some really bad aspects like Resonance, the math leaving most PCs feeling unimpressive and the terrible state of magic. It's great to hear there are going to be major changes, but simply going dark and saying "Trust us, this time it'll be good!" is not encouraging. The feedback you got about the playtest will be vitally important to creating a great game, but it's not enough. You only have feedback on the particular implementation. You probably have information on what the right direction to go is, but without further feedback you won't know if you're going too far or not far enough. I am sorry to say, but Paizo has had a tendency to dramatically over-correct. The playtest put that on display quite prominently. Magic for example was seen as too powerful, so it got nerfed to an absurdly painful degree. That proved unpopular, but how much buffing of magic is the right amount? Doing not enough and leaving it still uninspiring would be a problem, as would doing too much and making it godlike. Also knowing just what needs to be improved. Spell duration was one of the biggest problems, but wasn't even an option in the surveys. Conversely, the updates done through the playtest were mostly way too minor. Ancestries need a lot more than they got, same with the classes. The 1.6 changes were a nice start, but not nearly enough, especially for The Alchemist and Paladin which suffer from fundamental problems. Sharing progress and getting feedback about fine tuning is possibly even more important than the broad strokes info you got from the playtest. Going quiet and not taking any more feedback is a terrible mistake, both for reassuring those with bad playtest experiences and for getting the details right and making the best game possible.

I want PF2 to be awesome. And I think it can be. But it needs a whole lot of work, and a lot of fine tuning to get to that point. And that's better done with player feedback than blind. I wish you the best of luck, but I think you're making a huge mistake.