Character Advancement is Competitive

I'm just going to vomit some thoughts here that I've been having of late. Engines is in a really weird spot as far as PWs go. It's the only one that I know of where every facet of character advancement puts you at odds with your fellow players and party members. For the first example, and this one probably strikes home for a lot of us, Lockpick/Stealth/Detect advancement. This is probably the starkest area in which skill ups are a competitive field. With the character archetypes that I know exist, every party will probably have at least two or so people that want to stealth ahead because hey, they want to get Sneak Attack to a useful point someday. Maybe. But lo and behold, as they do that they also put on Detect mode because there's literally no reason not to. And so they find the stealthed containers and enemies first, and thereby get ranks in those without any chance for their fellow party members to do the same. And they'll probably pick locks too because hey why not. Similarly I could make some observations about Mercantilism, and how it's going to be a natural endgame of the server to have maybe three to four people that actually invest in it because they're the only ones groups let consistently sell things. All of this denies at least some XP and build options to perhaps non-traditional or (In the case of Mercantilism) characters made after roles have been established by most of the community.

Hell, if I'm feeling adventurous I can comment on a few more things. Anyone that uses incendiary or other AoE weapons without a pressing need for them (The swarms of skeletons in the early days of the server on graveyard departure) is denying other party members more opportunities to bash things more or get bashed. And just by virtue of how Taunt will (eventually) work, any party with a heavy armor user (You want/need one) will be denied the opportunity to advance other armor skills. And two tanks might be rough too depending on spawns. With deconstruction crafters now have to compete for loot alongside those that want to sell it for profit (I think. I haven't played since that was implemented so I don't know how the metagame evolved around decon). Boss loot woes (And boss lockouts) alongside placable despawning mean that (If I know how it works right) you might be at a real disadvantage if you want to bring someone that already ran the dungeon once with you, as you'll lose out on advancement opportunities they had.

Now, other PWs have degrees of competitiveness. ToA/PoS/RoD are what I'd call 'least competitive'. It's an XP system where even if you're useless/underleveled you get something from a run, and loot is entirely chest based and personal. I'd put Engines on the unfriendly end of the spectrum, as literally the only reason you have to party up is 'the content is impossible to do otherwise'. If not for that every facet of character advancement would be better served by soloing, or at least party size minimization. 

I'm not sure if this is an issue yet (Again, been busy elsewhere), but I have to think that eventually these metagame aspects of the Engines ruleset will make things more harsh for those that don't fill needed roles. In Engines you are, ultimately, one of two things. You tank, or you DPS. 90% of archetypes are the latter, and DPS types are (Mostly) interchangeable, with the usual MMO caveats of some archetypes having more than others. Tanks are less replaceable because they have a VERY specific set of skills they need to advance to do the role. Everything else is ancillary and can be done by any character (Behold the tank that self-Triages as he blocks). 

I'm not necessarily sure what to suggest here to improve this, as it's all natural system consequences. But I do think it's an issue that needs addressing at some point, or at least discussion.