I don't think it is possible to make a set of RPG game rules that are ideal for all of the various types of players and groups that there are in the world. (If someone wants to debate that, I would actually be interested in seeing the reasoning)
So with that in mind, it seems that each group of players are going to need to come up with house rules that tune the game to their desired play style.
Out of the box, the rules are almost certainly going to be tuned for Pathfinder Society play. Which makes sense. The standard rules are what are going to be used in Pathfinder Society games. I don't have a problem with the dev's tuning the game for that mode of play as the default.
One of the things that I have noticed about the new systems is how easily they take to tuning house rules. I would like to collect a bunch of them so that people creating home games with house rules can have a pile of them to choose from.
For example. There are players that don't like how the proficiency system is making all of the characters effective at all of the skills - even the ones that they have never put any effort or build power into.
House rule: Remove the +1/level when calculating proficiency bonus for any check made untrained.
There have been other house rules that I have seen. Such as the out of combat healing ritual. I thought that one was really nice. But now I don't remember where it was.
Problem: The multiple attacks per round for characters and opponents can make combat really lethal at low levels.
House rule: Strike and other attack actions can only be taken if the attack bonus after applying multiple attack penalty is still positive.
There is a possible new problem with this that we could end up with monsters able to make more attacks per round than the players. I seem to remember CR 1 goblins with a +6 attack bonus. Which means that they could make two attacks each round at +6/+1, while a level 1 character with maximum attack bonus is only at +5.
I'm probably going to house a lot of stuff once the full game comes out. I always do, even in P1E. But for the playtest I'm trying to play RAW as much as I can because it will help the playtest more.
Also a Fighter would have a +6. He's the only one but yeah.
House rules are good for the game.
But they're bad for the playtest.
They are bad for the published playtest adventures and survey results. But I think there's room for personal experimentation with house rules in homebrew games.
So, I'm not using house rules when I run Doomsday Dawn or Rose Street Revenge, but I am using them as I convert my ongoing Pathfinder First Edition campaign over to the Playtest rules. It gives insight into what actually works - proposing changes that have been "field tested" is better than just theorizing.
But absolutely - don't corrupt survey results with houserules!
I make the same kinds of rulings when I playtest as i do when playing other home games. That will affect my query results. But the purpose of the playtest is to find how the rules perform in a wide variety of groups using different playstyles.
I try to not take these rulings to the point of actual house rules tough.
Here are the House Rules that I'm currently using in my converted homebrew campaign.
--o Double Ancestry Feats at Level 1: I think there's a more in-depth fix but this is an effective quick patch.
--o Quick Healing Rituals: I'm still going to let them acquire some quick rituals despite Treat Wounds being a thing. I've got some ideas for non-healing quick rituals to give them.
--o Plague/Time Oracle Conversion: Homebrewing an adjustment to Occult Sorcerer.
--o Hunter Conversion: Use Fey Sorcerer as a baseline but swapped some powers around (e.g. Familiar to Animal Companion, exchanged a few spells).
--o Criticals & Skills: I'm definitely using scaling results of success and failure. I like the four degrees for attacks/spells, would have preferred that some skills had kept scaling results.
--o New Reactions: I'm working on some new reactions for the group. Only question is if I should focus on items or PC abilities. Leaning towards items for now due to updates.
--o Diehard Revision: I'm going to try my Diehard revision that lets characters stay conscious but slow when Dying.
I'm sure there a few more that I'm forgetting and a few more that I'll probably add later.
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I haven't gotten around to thinking much about House rules, since we're still seeing revisions to the game, and I don't really have need to houserule until the playtest is over, so I don't know exactly what I'd do, but my gut says:
Skills are scaled down to +0/+0/+1/+3/+5 over the 1-20 level gap, for easy/medium/hard/incredible/ultimate, and the +/- 10 is removed from skills, with crits/crit failures being on a 20 and 1 respectively.
Skills let you take 10, in certain situations. Not sure exactly what those situations would be, but this is mostly in response to treat wounds requiring approximately a billion rolls, and with the change to skill DCs, it'd be mostly automatic, but still take a reasonable amount of time.
Reduce monster AC, and boost monster HP to compensate. My gut is -2 AC/+25% HP, moving up to -3 AC/+40% HP at higher levels.
Create a list of "General Class Feats" that function similar to archetypes, in that any class can take them with class feats, but they have some prerequisites. Most combat Style feats and Metamagic feats would fit with this. This would make Fighter fairly redundant, initially, but hopefully there would be better feats that are granted to fighters in supplements.
Change skill proficiency so that you can have at most 1 legendary skill, and 2 master skills, with the rest being expert or trained. For the rogue, this would be 3 legendary skills, 4 master skills, the rest expert or trained, as I think it's better if the game encouraged more of a spread in skill proficiency, and it fits more aesthetically with me if you could only be legendary in one skill, unless you're skill focused (unsure what to do with MC rogues. Maybe 2/3 legendary & Master, but probably tied in some way to the skill mastery feat). I'd probably also implement something like Masters don't critically fail on a 1, and legendary critically succeeds on a 19 or 20, but that's more thought than I'd like to give before the playtest ends.
But ultimately, most of these aren't things I necessarily am looking to house rule, but hope are in the game by launch. Because I find the fewer things I need to houserule the better. The main thing I see highly likely not being changed is the +/- 10 thing for skills, but I'm fine just letting that be a house rule, assuming the final version doesn't work better without that house rule. The other things I'm still holding out hope, but I may have to house rule if needed.
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I have about 25Mb of text files detailing house rules for PF1.
Believe me when I say that there is absolutely no way I am going to play RAW once PF2 releases.
However.
I will playtest as RAW as it can get, because I fully intend for the final product to include at least some of the changes I hope to see.