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...which means we get maps in APs/adventures that look like crossectioned ants nests filled with uninteresting fights. Here's there thought process:
The "Adventuring Day" is one of these ideas that varies from group to group but are an important design philosophy for the game designers and adventure writers. It can be further be divided into "encounters per rest" and "encounters per session". It is also linked with XP requirements but I'll stay out of this for this discussion.
Pathfinder 1 paizo products have seemed to revolve around a high number of daily encounters of equal or less than equal party CR, culminating with a couple of higher than party CR. Most classes have "uses per day", vancian casting and similar mechanics in place tied to these assumptions. Some classes excel at this better than others, a magus will do better in short adventuring days than a fighter (in most common builds).
So, if you dont like this way of playing why not just change it at your table?
Well, we do, however:
Pathfinder Adventure Paths* and shorter adventures, which are one of their most consumed products, are probably Pathfinder's main manisfestation of this design happens, where we encounter spreads of maps with myriad of rooms with each of often very low CR.
These map/encounters are terrible. They are not interesting, they are not interactive, not challenging, they are not anything but time wasting and page space wasting. Starting combat is slow (which PF2e seems to improve on), combat itself is slow too especially at higher levels and can quickly bog down the mood if it is not interesting/challenging.
Pathfinder has definitely gotten better through the years at avoiding these as they do appear more in older publications, but they are there still. They are a tool, but should not be the standard. We have a saying in our group, "Another Paizo Dungeon" to mean the gm is about to compress 5 pages into 1, because flipping through the pages to see if room C-2746 had 2 or 3 goblins is not necessary.
As I mentioned above I suspect they are a product of XP requirements, but also of space constraints (expanding 5 rooms to 23 rooms on the same map is cheaper than making a new one), how classes are designed and balance (resource managing vs risk), and perhaps most likely, old D&D baggage.
So, I am wondering how much is PFe2 going to suffer from this Another Paizo Dungeon syndrome, since it that arises from core design choices. Thinking back I have often decided to buy an adventure mostly informed on flipping through it and seeing how much page space was used in telling me I could, in fact, throw hordes of low cr encounters at my player VS interesting plot hooks, dialogue, etc.
For us, the "adventuring day" is one of those sacred cows that we sacrificed long ago, the old school dungeon giving way to a more buzzword filled storytelling experience.
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A note, because we're all sensitive butterflies inside: I am very fond of Paizo, I am afterall a customer that buys a lot of their products and have good praise for their writers, work philosophies and support (seriously <3 you customer support). I also criticise, hopefully constructively, even though I'll make a quip here or there.
*I can find a dozen rules systems I like and willing to play, it is the combination of Pathfinder rules AND published adventures for which I keep playing Pathfinder. APs solve part of the hardest part of this hobby.
I can't tell what you are suggesting in its place.
I agree some of the AP dungeons suffer from an extreme degree of both sprawling complexes/many doors (each of which is perceptioned for secret doors, traps, locks, etc) sometimes with no real reason for having so many tiny rooms. So of the APs have text for "escalation" or which rooms respond to noises/etc, but in general many of them feel static unless the GM spends more time to make them live.
I don't want every encounter to be epic, so there should be some simpler ones, which is what has lead to the classic adventuring day. What are you proposing in its place?
I agree on that not every fight must be epic, and that the Gm takes what they want and shapes it to their table. The solution is to be inventive on the writers side. And that's rather difficult, but also why we buy these things.
Pathfinder assumes you need X xp to level. Which means that each goblin should give this much. If this scenario is from levels 3-4 then there must be at least n goblins, and there is one dungeon so there must be this many goblins...
This is a system design that leads to a subpar scenario (sprawling dungeon in question). However, it is so ingrained into the system that we can hardly do without, so what is the solution? Not following the system...but..then you have to decouple xp from levels and that really messes with the maths (and not to mention tradition) behind the game designing.
If it comes down to "make a suggestion", which isnt necessarily part of starting a discussion, I would cut down the amount of fights you're supposed to go through, the so called adventuring day.
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This is an inherent problem of monster-based XP. It's why I always use "progress"-based XP, that I award at the end of the session. Simple enough to calculate XP for a number of "encounters" of the party's average level based on how much or how little they "got done," regardless of whether they fought tons of monsters or didn't even get into combat at all.
I do the same (and I like that all the APs outline the leveling milestones these days). However that doesn't address the OPs point -- even if you use milestone leveling, published products inject enough encounters to make sure you would reach those milestone if you were tracking xp. And this sometimes leads to longer slogs of less interesting encounters. (It felt especially bad in Wrath of the Righteous, probably because it was a full 1-20 so they had to squeeze more exp/encounters per book than usual --- and because mythic just had balance issues,)
Regarding PF2, we know its now 1000exp per level, every level. And that encounters must reward a variable amount of exp depending on the average party level. We don't know (I think) what's the nominal exp for an CR=APL encounter in this system. Is it still ~14 encounters per level (at least that's the number that stuck in my head for what PF1 used?) Is it more/less -- I think that would start to get to the OP's topic.
So I'd like to throw a wrench into things, here.
Online play.
It's growing!
Online play is slower than Tabletop, sometimes. You may not can do as many encounters in a day.
It'd be cool to keep this in mind, and make 2e a little more flexible in that regard.
5E assumes 6-8 encounters per day. It feels like constant combat and im not a fan. Though I know some folks love the idea of 6-8 encounters per day.
I think the solution is to start with a base of say 4 encounters per day and build modular dials to crank that up to taste. This would be great for GMs, but I know it would make adventure writing more complicated.
PF1e already assumes 4 at CR encounters per day, doesn't it?
If you want grander and bigger battles, replace the monsters with higher C.F. ones (quick monster creation rules will be perfect for this) and there you go
I find it amusing the OP invokes tradition while bemoaning D&D baggage. One man's baggage is another man's tradition. Might be worthwhile not denigrating what people enjoy.
I agree that most AP include too many low level encounters that are not interesting, not because of challenge (it is OK if not every fight is an epic challenge that almost kill the players, and wiping the floor with weak mooks is a staple of the genre), but also non interesting narratively. Some times you are infiltrating the temple of the evil cult who is trying to bring back the undead dragon, and you find a totally unrelated carnivorous plant for no other reason that it has the appropriate CR and fill the XP budget.
As a GM, I usually remove those fights. Sometimes the entire dungeon, as there are adventures with transition dungeons who are clearly a fill to add enough CR appropriate combat, with little or no relation with the plot. The milestone XP is great for that.
Reducing the unnecessary combat, and increasing the XP for missions /quests/social encounters also helps to reduce he time needed to end an AP, which seems to be a concern for many players, specially those without a weekly schedule.
That said, I'm fine with solving the problem myself for my group, using milestone leveling, if the developers feel the way they design the APs currently satisfy a greater number of customers. It is easier to remove encounters than adding them.