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This is obviously anecdotal but my players had no issue or roadblock when picking ancestries.
I started part one Doomsday Dawn with 4 PC's, 3 of which have never played Pathfinder and 2 that had never played a TTRPG at all.
The 1 veteran player and 1 that had played 5e before both made half-orcs, Ranger and Barb, because they liked the concept. The two complete novice's made a Goblin Sorc and a Halfling Rogue.
At no point in this process did any of them complain about "being behind" or that they didn't have enough racials.
Pretty much went
GM -"these are the feats you get from your race/heritage/ancestry, you pick one now and then get more as you level"
Player: "ok cool" ->picks feat they like and moves on.
Did either of them pick Half-Elf, Half-Orc, or Adopted Ancestry at 1st level? If they didn't, I can see why they would have been content with the options given.
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Did either of them pick Half-Elf, Half-Orc, or Adopted Ancestry at 1st level? If they didn't, I can see why they would have been content with the options given.
"The 1 veteran player and 1 that had played 5e before both made half-orcs."
Honestly, if you don't have the baggage of PF1 experience, there's no reason to feel like you're not getting enough. I've played games where the only difference was basically appearance, and generally you just roll with it.
What I would like is higher level ancestry options. 2-3 really cool high level things that you can choose at lvls 10+. They don't even need to be mechanically powerful, just novel.
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It's mostly a culture shock coming from PF1 in which races gave a dozen tiny bonuses to PF2 in which ancestries give a couple.
But there are other games in this family of games that have minimal impact from "who your parents are"- for example in 13th Age, literally all your race gives you is a stat adjustment and a racial power you can later upgrade with a feat. So moving towards a system where "ancestry has minimal mechanical impact" isn't the worst thing in the world; one's dwarf is no less dwarfy if there aren't a hundred tiny bonuses to keep track of in order to reinforce aspects of dwarf culture.
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Yeah I do get the sense that a lot of pushback in the playtest is from the feeling that 'something is being taken away' from 1e.
Personally I like the new system, but do feel like it could do with just a bit more frontloading of ancestry feats. Two more than current by level 2 'feels' like the appropriate amount in my pure theorycrafting.
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I didn't get any pushback on ancestries from my players and I have one half-orc and one half-elf in the party. Both played by pepole who I played DnD 3.5 with and have played Pathfinder since its release.
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Honestly, if you don't have the baggage of PF1 experience, there's no reason to feel like you're not getting enough.
I think that's a bit of an unfair expectation. This isn't a new TTRPG. This is a new edition of a pre-existing one. People will come in with certain expectations. IMO those expectations should be met unless there's a good reason to net meet them.
I suspect we're actually getting as many options in PF2e as PF1e, they're just coming from different sources. So if we increase ancestry feats we might need to decrease something else.
But there are other games in this family of games that have minimal impact from "who your parents are"- for example in 13th Age, literally all your race gives you is a stat adjustment and a racial power you can later upgrade with a feat. So moving towards a system where "ancestry has minimal mechanical impact" isn't the worst thing in the world
I don't know if we consider 4th ed to be in the same family, but 13th Age owes just as much (if not more) of it's heritage to 4e as it does to 3.5e. So perhaps not the most persuasive argument to make.
I have played games where race made no difference at 1st level beyond a single feat/power and a couple of trained skills. It wasn't the most fun to be honest. I much prefer more meat to my races then that. But I would be happy to have less meat then PF1e had (by separating out some elements to culture instead of ancestry).
I don't know if we consider 4th ed to be in the same family, but 13th Age owes just as much (if not more) of it's heritage to 4e as it does to 3.5e. So perhaps not the most persuasive argument to make.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My wishlist for PF2 was basically "13A with more crunch" so I'm not broken up about it. It's definitely the d20 game I introduce new players with, since it's super-easy to pick up and play.
It's not like there wasn't quite a bit to like about 4e either.
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Honestly, if you don't have the baggage of PF1 experience, there's no reason to feel like you're not getting enough.I think that's a bit of an unfair expectation. This isn't a new TTRPG. This is a new edition of a pre-existing one. People will come in with certain expectations. IMO those expectations should be met unless there's a good reason to net meet them.
I suspect we're actually getting as many options in PF2e as PF1e, they're just coming from different sources. So if we increase ancestry feats we might need to decrease something else.
I actually think that a lot of the difficulties people are having with accepting some of the changes and conceits of PF2 is exactly that. I've been trying to consider it as a whole new, unknown game and I think it's helped me a lot to see it for it's own merits. Granted, it does have its problems that have to be fixed, but they're certainly less distressing that way.
I would perhaps allow a General Feat at first level instead of more ancestry ones, to add to the 'personal' part of ancestry->background->personal.
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I have played games where race made no difference at 1st level beyond a single feat/power and a couple of trained skills. It wasn't the most fun to be honest. I much prefer more meat to my races then that. But I would be happy to have less meat then PF1e had (by separating out some elements to culture instead of ancestry).
You know what, I would love to have a new category of feats called 'culture feats' that could come out with setting books and could be taken in place of ancestry feats (other than the required biological one.. heritage?).
Do you want to be more Qadiran than Human? Just choose Qadiran cultural feats at every opportunity. Want to be an gnome completely committed to Highhelm? Take Highhelm cultural feats instead of gnome ancestry ones!
This system could replace the current system and all it would take would be to separate current Ancestry feats into 'Genetic' and 'Cultural' feats for every ancestry buuttt.. that gets into the tricky space of trying to decide nature vs nurture and that's no fun for anybody.
Probably best to keep location/tribe based cultural feats separate and allow them to replace ancestry feats.
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I have played games where race made no difference at 1st level beyond a single feat/power and a couple of trained skills. It wasn't the most fun to be honest. I much prefer more meat to my races then that. But I would be happy to have less meat then PF1e had (by separating out some elements to culture instead of ancestry).You know what, I would love to have a new category of feats called 'culture feats' that could come out with setting books and could be taken in place of ancestry feats (other than the required biological one.. heritage?).
Do you want to be more Qadiran than Human? Just choose Qadiran cultural feats at every opportunity. Want to be an gnome completely committed to Highhelm? Take Highhelm cultural feats instead of gnome ancestry ones!
This system could replace the current system and all it would take would be to separate current Ancestry feats into 'Genetic' and 'Cultural' feats for every ancestry buuttt.. that gets into the tricky space of trying to decide nature vs nurture and that's no fun for anybody.
Probably best to keep location/tribe based cultural feats separate and allow them to replace ancestry feats.
I am pretty sure this is exactly the sort of thing they intend to do with the ancestry feats. When a location book comes available new ancesteries feats open up if you want to be from qadira or osirion. They could be available to any race who wanted to come from that part of the world or you could do new ones that were race specific. That they are a big generic off the bat is honestly pretty much as it should be. The core rule set should be mostly generally applicable bread and butter stuff.