This is kind of the criticism of 3e, which is what Pathfinder is a rendition of. If games spent a lot more time teaching people the rules, and I don't mean through pop-ups and encyclopedia entries, the barrier wouldn't be such a pill to swallow.
I'm also not sure if PoE is a simplified game, at least for me it was mostly a struggle figuring out the connection between my input into the game and the output after it went through its byzantine calculations.
Yeah, when they decided to use the Pathfinder IP for the game they know they are going into deep waters. If you make it too pen-and paper, gamers would not play it, if you do not use most of the features and mechanics the TT has, players will ignore it.
In the case of those games ( Neverwinter, POE, Tyranny, Pathfinder games, shadowrun...) mostof the maths of the game are taking care by the game engine, so it´s a "problem" if you want to know how it works, checking what the numbers on the log meant. And I agree most of the calculations of the D100 system the POE games use are a little weird. At least with D20 games, you know exactly what number you have to beat haha.
About the "Too many options" discussion, I´ll take more options any day of the week. My library is full of games I completed in a first 100% run and I never played again because I couldn't find a reason to. I like to pick games that would not be forgotten after weeks of playing. Games like Baldur´s gate, Pathfinder, Pillars of eternity, Neverwinter Nights, tyranny,... they are still in my hard drive after all those years because, even if I know the story by heart, I always find some reason to play it again: choose another path, trying a new class, check this new mod that allows you do something different, etc
