So as optimistic as I am I'm also very curious / concerned about one thing, especially given the apparently artificially short duration of the playtest. What do Mark, Eric and the rest of the devs actually expect / want from us the players / GMs during the playtest? I'm not sure there's enough time to properly iterate the rules and go through multiple sets of changes if the final product is supposed to come out August 2019.
Is the expectation that the core rules are mostly locked in, and we're just giving feedback to tweak the numbers? Or is that August 2019 date just an optimistic tentative number and they're willing to push it back to August 2020 to go through some iterations, like the long D&D Next playtest?
Do the devs want us mostly to play through the Playtest Adventure in Golarion multiple times with different characters and give feedback arising from it? Or do they want us to also run the playtest with home settings and custom / converted adventures? Will they find feedback from such settings as useful / listen to it as much?
Do the devs want us to houserule a few things and give feedback on how that plays compared to what is presented in the actual playtest document? Or are they more interested in just going with the entire 100% playtest ruleset and giving maybe less granular feed back like "this feels ok" / "this doesn't feel right but because we can't really try a different thing and report results on that for comparison, I can't really say why"?
Are they more interested in feedback about low level play, mid level play, or high level play?
How many player characters is the math in PF2 targeted at? Is it 4 characters, 5, 6? How much guidance will there be for scaling the game to larger or smaller player groups? Will feedback from groups that have less players or more players be as useful to them?
Or are we going to have something more targeted, like "waves"? Something like... "Hey guys, in August we would like you to try the adventure with low level characters. In September we would like you to try playing a party of all the same class. In October we would like you to try playing an adventure with level 18 characters. Etc"
I feel that answers to these would help give shape to a lot of peoples' ideas that are all over the place as to what the design target for the game actually is.
My guess based on nothing in particular, is that most of the systems were hashed out in a closed playtest. The public one is supposed to reaffirm those conclusions. I wouldn't expect radical departures from what we see in August.
Looking forward to the surveys.
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How will the playtest work?
The playtest will kick off in August with character creation and the first of the seven parts of the Pathfinder Playtest Adventure. We will take a few weeks to focus on each section, giving you a chance to play it with your friends and submit feedback in the form of detailed experience surveys. Make sure to visit this space as we get close to the launch of the playtest for more details.
and
What kind of response will we see to our feedback during the playtest of the game?
This time, we are doing things a little bit differently so that you can get a better sense of how the playtest is proceeding and what we are learning and changing about the game.
The design team will be talking to players and game masters on the forums here at paizo.com. You outnumber us by over 10,000 to 1, so we need a way to talk to all of you as a group.
During each playtest window, we will be showcasing the section with a live stream of the game from the Paizo offices. After each window closes and we've had some time to look at the surveys we will also do a live steam recap of what we learned and what we are changing, and we'll answer popular questions from playtesters. This additional content will be live-streamed on the Paizo Twitch channel then archived on the Paizo YouTube channel.[/quote'
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I can only comment on this from my prior experiences doing playtesting with other systems.
No need to guess. Paizo devs have already said what kind of feedback they're looking for
submit feedback in the form of detailed experience surveys
and
after each window closes and we've had some time to look at the surveys we will also do a live steam recap of what we learned and what we are changing, and we'll answer popular questions from playtesters.