I have GMed a grand total of 21 playthroughs of playtest adventures thus far.
I have to say, one thing they definitely should have done for this playtest was include starting positioning. As anyone who has ever played D&D 3.X, D&D 4e, Pathfinder, or D&D 5e knows, the first round of combat is the most important round of them all, and starting positioning can make or break the first round. Paizo bothered to include starting positioning for Raiders of Shrieking Peak and Arclord's Envy, but otherwise, there are minimal guidelines for starting positioning. I cannot help but think that this is a major cause of table variation for playtest results.
Paizo is not even bothering to ask how GMs handled starting positioning in the surveys, so Paizo has no way of determining just how much of a factor starting positioning played in each adventure.
It is disappointing to know that Paizo never thought to take into account such an important variable.
