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Foreword: Like many folks here, I've yet to play the game as written. This is just an impression.
I don't know if this is a local opinion or one that's more widespread, but I've heard plenty of players say something along the lines of "Race only matters at level 1." What they tend to mean is that race, in 1e, didn't really impact a character. Generally racial traits weren't anything to write home about, and racial feats were rarely selected.
2e seems to have taken that problem and just stretched across the lifetime of a character. Now characters get about the same impact from Ancestry, but it's spread over more levels. When I first saw the changes to Ancestry, I was stoked, but as I read more I got more and more disappointed.
My proposed fix echoes a bit of what I've read elsewhere. Boost Races at the onset, then have some of their core abilities grow over time. This is a lot of what feats did for races last edition, but it was tough to justify taking something over Quicken Spell or Power Attack or whatever made your character float.
I don't know if this is a local opinion or one that's more widespread, but I've heard plenty of players say something along the lines of "Race only matters at level 1." What they tend to mean is that race, in 1e, didn't really impact a character. Generally racial traits weren't anything to write home about, and racial feats were rarely selected.
I'm sure this is true in a large sense, but only because people are doing it wrong.
And I've done it wrong too. In Shadowrun it took me two attempts to build a drake character that actually benefited from his racial abilities (which I paid 90 points for!) Not that my first attempt was bad (I was still somehow more effective than everyone else, despite having unintentionally gimped my character into "basically human"). My ifrit wishcrafter didn't work out that well either (relied to heavily on people "wishing I'd set things on fire" and they kept forgetting).
Right now in Pathfinder I have two characters in two different games:
- kobold unchained summoner
- tengu witch
I feel the impact of my racial choices almost every game (kobold is level 6, game on hiatus due to PF2, witch is level 4).
For the kobold:
- I have 6 con, which makes my personal hitpoints very low.
- I swapped +1 nat AC for 5 electrical resistance. It saved my life (literally) in the first dungeon. We haven't come across lightning damage since, but its way better than 1 AC.
- The kobold racial favored class bonus makes the eidolon Shield Ally ability stronger, but slowly, it kicks in next level. At 12th when it becomes Greater Shield Ally I'll be granting +6 to AC and saves for the party (in close quarters fights, anyway). By 19th that'll rise to +8.
- My eidolon has a dragon theme. I'm no cheesing the evolutions for the mechanically "best" options (more limbs for more attacks), but rather evolving a character that fits my desires. I mean, sure, he's a g## d%*n tank with 25 AC at level 5 (I picked up Tail at 6th; the benefits are negligible so I'm more or less saving the point for 7th so I can get something that costs 2, I figure visually the eidolon always has a tail, there's just no mechanical benefit) and has a pretty decent DPS, but it's still cohesively themed.
- Being frigging terrified for my life due to low HP and AC, the kobold has survived encounters that have literally killed the rest of the party (GM fiat at the table ruled that the monster we encountered was a little unfair and let us escape, but the next session everyone but me wanted to make new characters anyway, so GM fiat overruled prior fiat (I showed up at the session with a sign written in Draconic: "LFG")).
- Feats: Kobold Confidence: I should take this ASAP. I should have already taken it!
- Merciless Magic: Doesn't fit my build, but man, I kind of wish it did.
- Draconic Breath: Feat tax I don't really want, but the breath weapon would be hilarious.
For the witch:
- Theme, again, as I picked up a raven familiar. Bigraven chitter-talks with their familiar.
- Double-bonus from Linguistics (Gifted Linguist). I know nine friggin languages now and have a +9 to the skill. And its come up.
- Favored class bonus: I've so far only grabbed an additional 1st level spell known, but that's mostly due to being absolutely stretched for skill points. May not actually come up, but the flexibility is nice.
- Sneaky: hasn't come up that much, but I am playing a shifty bastard of a bird. I even grabbed a collapsible Kumade to make those pesky climb DCs easier (I have a rake: I hook the end on the windowsill and pull myself up) because I don't have training (so no free +3 and a negative str mod).
- Swordtrained: won't come up, and there were no racial substitutions that made any more sense.
- Feats: Scavenger’s Eye. I'd take that. Even with my current +12 bonus.
- Tengu Wings, Tengu Raven Form: thematically I'd take them, but won't have the availability until 9th and 13th respectively. 5, 7, and 11 are already spoken for (and thank god my GM is fine with 3rd party content: witches don't have many class specific feats and I found two that really benefit my--highly unfortunate and friggin hilarious--healing build ("No! No! Not the--AURGH THE BAD HEALS, I FEEL AWFUL!")).
- I plan on taking Cook People at 10th. It'll be awesome feeding our slain enemies to the party as cookies without them knowing how their made. *Innocent beak* And I already have a quote ready to go when they find out; thank you Raven.
But yeah, I definitely see your point about the new ancestries. Still want to play it out and see what happens, but I do feel the weak blandness of a lot of them.