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Trying to put this to words, so bear with me.
A baseline character is the hypothetical worst character that it is possible to be for a given level. Worst attack bonus; no trained skills; no feats; no weapon proficiency; and so on. All actual characters are at least as good as the baseline character and are better than baseline at many things.
In Pathfinder 1, the baseline character was unplayably bad. At level 1, the character is marginally effective at combat and could maybe manage a skill check for easy tasks. But it gets exponentially worse as levels increase. So a big part of building a character is picking the class, skills, and feats that will increase your character to be effective at the role that the group needs from you.
In Pathfinder 2, the baseline character is still only marginally effective at level 1. Still no trained skills or battle prowess. However, the character stays at that marginally effective level through the level progression. A level 8 baseline character is still marginally effective at combat and has a small chance of success at easier skill checks appropriate to the level. Same at level 16 and level 20.
This does a couple of things. One, it means that it is practically impossible to create a character that is unplayably bad. The worst you will be is marginally effective instead of good or superb at something. This means that there is now room in character creation for picking feats and skills based on how it flavors the character rather than having to pick only feats and skills that will keep your character relevant and effective at your role.
This also means that the amount of mechanical benefit that a given skill or feat gives is much lower. The difference between baseline and effective is much smaller than in Pathfinder 1. So the power gained by a feat don't need to be as large in order to make the character effective.
The tradeoff is that this nerfs power gaming into the ground. It really isn't possible to focus all of your power purchases into a couple of areas in order to make a character that is super high powered in those areas. The best melee damage dealing build is probably built around Double Slice. And even with that it is only marginally better than a battle wizard with 14 in STR swinging his staff three times in a round. The Fighter with Double Slice is definitely still going to be noticeably better than the battle wizard. But the difference isn't going to be as much as in Pathfinder 1.
So the basic idea is that when building a character, you don't have to build to a role. You can build to the character you want to play and the roles will be filled to at least a minimum effective level.
This is great for thespian style players and casual gamers. It is decent for optimizer players. Kinda feels bad for power gamers though.