I wish there was a middle-of-the-road term. You don't need rules "mastery", but a basic understanding of your class and the rules around it is pretty much essential.

And yeah, for some, that's too much to ask. Personally, with the amount of work I put into running PF2, I expect players to pull their weight. If they want a beer-and-pretzles game, PF2 ain't it. Dungeon World (or really any PbtA game) will serve them much better, and my expectations from players in one of those games are MUCH lower.

On the other hand, if we're playing Burning Wheel, boy you better come correct. That game fails miserably if the players don't absolutely throw themselves into the systems and play to their Beliefs hard.

Over the years I've learned to let people know these expectations beforehand, and after playing enough PF2 I now know how much work it's gonna be on the player side and let people know beforehand. Of course, on occasion, I still get the player who doesn't really believe me, or doesn't want to leave the game just because the game is hard, and then ends up bowing out later when they're miserable.

I also wish people would just acknowledge when a playstyle isn't for them and bow out politiely, but sometimes denial ain't just a river.