It's a bad example because we all know how doors really work. Think about it in terms of grabbing a bag of gold. Someone will, someone won't. But your disconnect is coming from the illusion that raises spent in a sequence are sequential in time. In this game (and in John's perception of mechanics) they are not. This is the same reason the design team thinks it is fine for Parry to happen on the player's me t action regardless of what goes on with other players in between. Since we think in sequence, this is hard to fathom in a game built around taking turns. My advice is to presume that opposed actions like this will resolve at the end of the sequence.

I would say that when each Hero and/or Villain declares their Approach, when two characters are trying to do the same thing. After rolling their Dice, they need to (secretly perhaps) devote the number of Raises to that action they want to spend. Then when the first person's turn comes up for that Action, they reveal and the opposing person reveals and there's some narrative. I don't think the intent is that they have to do the same Action on the same Turn, since that's not likely to occur. And if they do need to do that, basically whoever goes first would always succeed and that's not how it appears written.

John

That is not the case at all. Let's say our hero has 4 raises and the villain 7. Now, if the villain REALLY wants it, he can bid 5 and there is nothing to be done regardless of who goes first. If he bids 4, with the villain winning Tues, he will still get it as well (because he is A: going first and B: the hero would need to exceed 4 to beat that). But perhaps that villain still needs to spend an action to avoid a scene consequence, has to deal with the rest of the party and some other things. So the villain spends 3 raises on his first action. He has grabbed the bag of gold. Things happen on 6&5 raises if someone had those and we get to the villain on 4 who spends a raise for that consequence. FINALLY, the hero can act on 4. If he wants that bag of gold, he can spend all 4 raises and suffer the consequences. The character with the most raises will always have an advantage. That is what the stats represent. And villains are built to face a whole party so they can and will be able to successfully do something every round. Players need to work together to figure out how to force the villain to prioritize their goals in an order that benefits the heroes.

Yeah, kinda liking Salamanca's answers on how to handle this.

I've been playing FFG's Star Wars game largely since they released the EotE Beta, so the Action Sequence in this game not being strictly linear isn't that novel a concept for me or my usual group of players to wrap their heads around.

As a thought, if there is a contested action available during an action sequence, be less declarative about it.  Rather than "The Villain grabs the bag of gold with 3 raises", say "The Villain dives for the bag of gold with 3 raises".  If someone else devotes 4 raises to it they can "Joachim sprints across the room to the bag of gold with 4 raises".

Once there is no-one left with enough raises to over-rule the most recent character you can adjudicate.  In that instance, at the end of the 5 raises step: "Joachim snatches the bag of gold from under the nose of the Villain."