WoTR is the prime example of how having too many options can be bad for casual gamers, there are too many many classes and subclasses, too many spells, the party is too large. Pathfinder is good for hardcore nerds, but for me it is too confusing and boring.
You're mixing "having a lot of options" and "being complex" together. There's "having a lot of options", and there's "having a lot of things going on at the same time". If we're going to start listing reasons why a player would be put off by the Pathfinder games, there are other reasons much more convincing than "because the games have too many classes and races". No one forces players to read through all 20+ classes and 10+ races. The few core classes - Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, and core races - Human, Elf, Dwarf, are all there, so you can just pick them if you don't want to bother with the rest.
What would put people off tends to be what comes after that, when they find out there are way too many factors that affect their character which require their decision making. For someone who is not familiar with the system, this would probably put them off. For someone who knows the system, however, they will probably be comfortable selecting things for their character. What "confuses" you is not the "options", but the complexity of the system. And if we're talking about the Pathfinder games in particular, they are not only complex, but can also be unforgiving, even on what they call "normal" difficulty, unless you have very good knowledge of the system. This means, again, it requires people to invest time and effort to get used to a complex system in order to have a chance to enjoy the games.
If a person never played pathfinder or dnd and just wants to play, let's say, a mage-type character he will have to choose from Alchemist (6 subclasses), Arcanist (6 subclasses), Bard (6 subclasses), Magus (7 subclasses), Sorceror (7 subclasses), Witch (6 subclasses), Wizard (7 subclasses). That's 45 options for an arcane spellcaster. If you aren't into rulebook reading and decide to read about every class you will get bored, if you just randomly pick one you will be frustrated by the fact that you may have picked wrong. You can't win there if you are just an average rpg fan.
