This is just some grievances I've had the last few years with the games I've been playing in. So wall of text Rant warning incoming:
It feels like everytime I want to play something more thematic or less optimized, there's either always a powergamer or the general group vibe is towards more optimized builds. In every group I play in: can't think of a single time a person has taken a non-combat related feat and come to feel bad because they aren't as powerful as everyone else.
Like if I make a guy who can scale rooftops or mountainsides, how am I suppose to feel when the party's caster just gives everyone flight? It feels like my character is wasted investment.
In every group I play in, people usually only focus on maxing stuff like Spellcraft, Knowledge (Arcana), and Use Magic Device. Which leads up to alot standing around and the DM having to throw us a bone because nobody has any other skills to solve the problems to progress the game. I feel like that isn't what is suppose to be happening.
Also this: we also have this guy who isn't a problem or a munchkin. But he has very extensive game knowledge and will constantly call out the mechanical things of everything we are fighting and metagames as well. (Examples: Monster can deflect a projectile must has Deflect Arrows, will avoid targeting creatures who are immune to abilities without having the ingame knowledge skills to know that). During the DM's dialog promping people to interact, he's actively trying to pick out a 3rd level spell he got last session from leveling up and talking about it.
He also doesn't really roleplay with a voice either, just speaking as he is while calling out all the mechanical stuff out of game when everyone is roleplaying. And often solves ingame problems with extensive IRL knowledge about things that, again, his ingame character would not know.
I know this sounds like a "find another group", but it's just something that keeps happening to me, and I'm wondering if trying to play a "character" and not a statblock is wrong. The original reason I got into Pathfinder over something like D&D5e is because of all the customization options to truly make a character yours, but now it just seems like most of those are traps for feeling inferior and bad at the game.