Samuel_Tow

It didn't when I did it. The first time we killed the Hydra Head back in 2004, we got a mess of tentacles remaining and no Rikti in sight, since we'd killed the previous ambush before launching our final attack on the last sliver of health. With 60 seconds and probably 20 tentacles, we still failed. That could have changed in recent years, but that's how it was then.

This is such utter nonsense it's no wonder MMOs are stuck in the rut they are if that's the thinking that goes behind them. If you think that all MMOs are is a giant time sink, then I am glad you are wrong on this game. Things here happen quickly and often effortlessly, which is less annoying, less boring and makes for much better replay value. Especially here, in a game built around replayability, rather than taking a bazillion hours to kit a character out completely. WoW pretty much has the market cornered on that, and copying its model is a bad way to go.

I don't know if you've noticed, but people tend to play games to have fun, and despite popular opinion, MMORPGs are still games. City of Heroes, I think, has the right idea in allowing you to have fun RIGHT NOW. Not at the level cap, not in 30 days, not after a specific milestone. Right now. As in, as soon as you step into the tutorial. MMOs have slowly but surely been moving into more entertaining, less grindy gameplay for years. Back in the day, all you did was pick a moor and grind until your brain went blank, but these days? These days you have quests that take you to interesting places, you have complex game and plot mechanics, you have interesting twists and turns, you always have a task ahead of you, and every MMO since creation has slowly but surely increased its levelling speed as it went up in age. How many people have whined on the WoW boards that "damn dirty noobs" can now get a mount dirt cheap at, like, level 1 and they level up so much faster?

Time sinks are not the way of the future, and people don't quit when they don't feel like their time is being wasted.

Considered? Yes. But it's completely out of the question. Why? Every time I've been in the War Zone and done a /whoall, it has revealed myself and, at most, two other people. Every. Single. Time. The only way to organise one would be to go out, study tactics, post it on the forums, schedule it, organise it and so on and so forth. And that is going so far beyond the call of duty it stops being a game and starts looking suspiciously like a job. And my job pays significantly more than a fifth of a virtual costume set.

You answered your own question. It needs a level 50 with time enough on his hands to do this and enough charity in his heart to waste his time on me, getting absolutely nothing but a badge he already has. Have you any idea how long it took me to get the Overseer badge on my newblie level 1 character? Going to the Shard is pointless, because there is never anyone there. At all, ever. Asking random strangers to please take an hour of their time and waste it on me is out of the question. I asked pretty much all the friends I had, and the answers ranged from "I don't have level 50 characters on this server" to "I just don't play the same hours as you" to "OK, I can do that some time next week." From when I first started begging for it to when a kind and generous soul finally decided to help me was something on the neighbourhood of five days. That's... Last Friday to this Tuesday. And it STILL took us close to an hour.

So, yeah, it very much takes more than just entry permission.

You're not weird, you're just not listening. I am not against prestige rewards, or rewards in general. I'm against them being COSTUMES. You don't see me clamouring we should get all powers at level 1. Hell, I've argued AGAINST making Ninja Run available before a genuine travel power unlocks at level 14. Powers, slots, badges, accolades, contacts, titles, name colours, all of these are things I am perfectly fine with being achievements. But not costumes. Not in the slightest.

Catch 22: My latest Scrapper required Rularuu's Bane to look even remotely decent. I couldn't get the sword on my own until I was 41, 42 or up, but without the sword, I could never get to level 2, much less 42. I need the sword, but I can't have it now, and I can't get to it, because I'd need to to be able to get to a level where I can have it. Just doesn't work.

And it's not like I'm asking for it for free. I earned that sword on another Scrapper by means of Overlords. I've done the Dr. Quaterfield, Justin Augustine and Faatim the Kind TFs. I've done Naylor's Rularuu arc over half a dozen times, and I've done Pyther's Shard arc at least twice. I've earned the Rularuu weapons a dozen times over, but no, not on this one! No, I have to earn them every time all over again. That's why I prefer veteran rewards, even though they're unfair, and micro transactions, even though they're not a good thing. Because they only need to be gotten once, then I can use them all the time.

I don't care if Vanguard pieces cost 10 000 merits each. If they were unlocked account-wide, I'd know I'm working for something that builds up and wouldn't have to do it over and over again. But for something that has to be unlocked on every character, they just cost too much.

[quote]The reason for them to exist is simply to have something for people to earn. There are all kinds of things you can earn in this game, capes and auras among them, all of which are prestige content. Capes are (or, at least, weren't until the Magic pack came out) just as much unlocked content as the VG costume pieces and I've met very few people that have a problem with those.[/quote

Then we run in different circles. A lot of the people I know feel having to unlock capes is a bad design decision, and the ones that don't care about it typically don't wear capes. Man, it feels like I got transported back in time with this "prestige" argument. There is nothing that's "prestige" about costumes, because the unlockable stuff is typically worse than the stuff you get. So unless you feel looking tacky is prestigious, I have to disagree on both the validity and the merit of prestige costume items.

Actually, wasn't one of the main arguments FOR city of heroes that "I don't have to look like everyone else because everyone has the one best set of gear?" Last I checked, people enjoyed being able to look good by their design, not "good" by virtue of what the "best" pieces in the game were. That's the big problem with this "prestige" thing. Unless it actually looks better than what we get for free, it's not really prestigious so much as pompous, and what looks good doesn't come down to stats or designation, it comes down to the player's ability to make a decent costume. And, quite frankly, a good costume always, always trumps a full set of any one thing, because full sets are always silly, including Vanguard.

You answered you own question. Insulting my intelligence is the fast-track way to get me to flip you the birdie. I'm generally not a bad person, but I've no qualms about being the bad guy when I feel the other party is treating me like crap. You went out of your way to perform character assassination on me, demonstrating me to be unworthy of making these claims while carefully avoiding addressing the actual claims, themselves, like they were beneath you. It's all "you are this," "you are that," "you should do this" and "you shouldn't do that." That, and statement and restatement of the same facts without an actual argument for them. So my response to that is quite natural: go to hell.

I'm going to remain polite and in the discussion as long as there is something to discuss, but "this is stupid" and "you are impotently whining" do not constitute something to discuss, unless we are discussing my worthiness as a human being. Here's the thing - even if you run me into the ground, you're not going to be right unless you can run everyone who shares my opinion this thread into the ground, too. We may not be many, here at least, but by the same token, I am not alone. So unless you have an argument against the concepts and suggestions made here, shutting people up is not going to produce any results.

You claim to understand what I'm saying, yet you keep missing it by a mile. You keep arguing about the cost of the costume item and its value separately, when they are both part of the same thing - worth. An item that is worth it may have a high value with a high cost, or a low value with a low cost. Examining the item AFTER you acquire it, you are looking only at its value but ignoring its cost, and claiming people say it's valuable. It IS valuable. Not as much as you claim, but it is. You then examine the item's cost separately, and determine it to be low, at least by your standards. And it may be. But the item's cost is STILL too high for its value, when examined together BEFORE you have gotten it.

Also, your observations may not be objective, because from what I hear, you're mostly looking at people who enjoy ship raids anyway. As such, the cost, to them, is significantly lower. As Mattias Nilsson said, "As long as you're going to kill someone anyway, you may as well get paid for it." For me, someone who dislikes raids and other high-population events, it's a significantly higher cost. Are the costume pieces good? Yup. They're not bad by any stretch. Do I want them? Sure, the more pieces available, the better the costume-making experience. But I don't want them enough to go out of my way and organise raids for them, and getting them through regular missions is out of the question.

Let me ask you this - what does the game gain from having these costume pieces be as expensive as they are? The people who have no problems getting them will continue to have no problems, and the people who were locked out of them before will get them now. What does the game stand to gain by people NOT having these pieces, possibly ever at all? What satisfaction do you derive from my NOT having access to the Vanguard pieces? I understand that people would want them, certainly, but I never understood why people want others to NOT have them.

That's all I've been hearing for the past five years: "I can get them, who cares about you." Excuses, apologetic, explanations and spins on why these unlockable costume pieces should be left alone. I have never, not ever, not from a player nor from a developer, heard a decent, convincing argument why these unlockable costumes were needed to be in the game in the first place. It's easy to argue status quo once it becomes that, but I've never been given a good reason why it BECAME like this, and I've never met a proponent for unlockable costume pieces who even cared to have one.

Allow me to ask you a question - how many people have you seen walking around in Vanguard gear? Just random people in the streets or strangers in pick-up groups. Because I've looked, and outside of the one or two people I've seen in full Vanguard attire (which really doesn't look good with the WHOLE set, but that's besides the point), I've not seen anyone so much as use a PIECE of the set. Not even the gloves you get for FREE. And I've looked. I just haven't seen it. Oh, I've seen a few Vanguard weapons, that much I will give you, but pieces of the actual costume? Never seen them as far back as I can remember. And, to me, a costume set almost no-one uses (as far as I've seen) is not a smart use of resources.

It should be a large blue or pink bubble. If you didn't see that, something has changed. Possibly a bug.

You need to kill the Hydra head and all the Hydra tentacles. We found that out the hard way. We downed the head with a minute left on the clock, but we couldn't clear the tentacles in time. That was our third failure at the time. The fourth run was my one and only success, back in 2004, I think.

Also, it's good practice to damage the generators down to just a sliver of health as you're taking the Rikti down. That way, the differences in damage output for each of the generator teams aren't as evident and they come down more closely together.

As, well, taking you 50 minute to get down sounds like a LOT. It seems like you fought your way down the catwalks and killed everything in sight. The way we did it was to have someone with Greater Invisibility and Grant Invisibility first find all the chests and then hide us all until we could get the chests. Of course, that was before stealth suppression, so Lord knows how well it would work now.

Rikti spawn as the hydra head goes down in health in a very standard nature. There is one ambush at each health milestone - 75%, 50% and 25%, and the ambushes are huge and mostly made out of bosses that are at least +1 to everybody, possibly more. The Trial is 38-41, and everything in there spawns fixed at 42. Or at least that's how it was.

The Hydra Trial is one of the most entertaining parts of the game, but since the death of Kraken Farming, no-one ever even starts one. With all the easier ways to powerlevel and all the more convenient TFs, people have gotten lazy. It's very hard to get them to do a Trial that causes them to go so far out of their way, and such a hard one, at that. I wish more people did these thing.

See, I keep seeing that, but... Why? Sure, it's a unique set, but half of its pieces are otherwise available, between Valkyrie, Enforcer and now Ulterior. I guess the head pieces are kind of unique, though the Science and Cyborg parts sort of go there. Basically, it's "one more set," which is always cool, but not at that overhead.

This is actually what changed my mind on booster packs. Yeah, I was never too hot on spending extra money, and I DO believe that micro transactions are the devil, but here's the thing - if they're not put in as paid packs, they'll be put behind some STUPID condition to unlock them and taken out of character creation. Forget that. $10 is worth the utility of having them available right at the start.

Powers, slots, temps and so on... That's bad. Paying for power is definitely a no-no. But I'd sooner pay for my costumes with money now, than pay for them with money, time, effort and anger over and over again.

It's a bad idea because it diminishes one of the game's key selling points. And I don't know what planet this is on, but the one I'm on doesn't see mothership raids done all the time. I know. I've looked. I don't get invited to them, I don't see them just spontaneously happening when I'm there, I don't see any mention of them in any of the global channels I'm a member of. In all the time since they came out, I've been to two raids, an I've heard about possibly three more. That's all.

And you may call it stupid, but that's like saying everyone can get the Overseer badge because everyone can now get into the Shadow Shard, conveniently neglecting that it takes more than just entry permission.

Which proves nothing, which was my point. What the developers intended is not inherently better for the game. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it isn't. That makes it worthless as an argument for anything other than establishing if something is a bug or not, which wasn't the question here. Just because that's what the developers intended isn't a guarantee it's actually good.

You know, you can't really claim "vocal minority" and then quote absolute anecdote as your counter-evidence. This is misleading bordering on hypocritical. When I say many people, I point to the ones present in this thread and the ones who have spoken up on the subject before, and over the years in threads like this one. How "many" that is may be subject to debate, but your anecdote alone is not sufficient to disprove it. And if we're going to commit to that line of argument, then I can safely say that I've never met anyone with all Vanguard pieces unlocked and wondering what to do with his merits, while I have met many people who feel that the costumes are far too expensive for what they are.

They're not a prestige costume piece unless I lost my ability to read. They're an unlockable costume piece, and last I checked, there was no prestige about these. We went over this five years ago. The idea of "prestige" costume pieces is absurd, because you can't make costume pieces which are unambiguously "better," and as such, all you do is pull costume pieces at random and tag them as "prestige." And it's absurd every time. So, I can use medieval armour without restriction, but Roman armour is prestige. I can use an M16 Assault Rifle, but a Tompson Submachine Gun is prestige. It makes no sense. It never did.

There was never any reason for unlockable costume pieces to exist at all. The only reasons anyone has ever been able to provide have been after-the-fact apologetic about why this mistake needs to remain true. Jack tried to call this a dead horse back in 2004, and as you can plainly see, this will not go away. Ever.

Considering how many times you've insulted me in this post, I'm going to have to ask you to up your standards. If you'd actually bothered to read and comprehend what I posted, you wouldn't have resorted to name-calling and insults.

"They are not worth the effort" is not hard to parse. They (the costume pieces) are not worth the effort (raiding and grinding) because they are nothing special. All locking them does is deny them to the broader audience. There are plenty of rewards to give out for "hard work" that are far easier to qualify and quantify and measure against each other. "One more pants texture" is not among them.

I tried it, but this really just made him look like Zorro. I don't know if it's the short hair or the big hat, but it just looked odd on top of the high-collar cape and the Baron jacket and boots. That, and the long white hair actually works well for the bit of added mystery I've been writing into him for some time now.

It very much does, in the same way a talent show is part of beauty contests. A costume, as cool as it may be, is just a pretty picture. A character is much cooler if it is the complete package. You're not obligated to agree with me, but if costume contest organisers require a bio, you are obligated to comply or bow out.

As for myself, all of my characters have a bio, except for something like two, and both of those have a general idea. That said, not every character has a STORY. 1024 symbols in a text field is good for setting the tone and giving some info, but it's nowhere near enough for a character to truly come alive for me. I've written actual full-length fiction for a lot of them, one story involving two pushing 80 pages, but I obviously don't have enough time, or indeed inspiration, to write about them all.

My characters don't get a bio at character creation after I had to rewrite a bio several times because I couldn't get the name I wanted. I intend to write them soon after creation, but oftentimes just procrastinate until level 20+. I have an idea, it's just not put into words until then. It really depends on my whim, and sometimes writing a short bio inspires me to write a longer, full story.

A bio, however, will not save a character from deletion. I've deleted plenty of characters both of a high level and of a long bio just because they were the wrong AT or I needed the space or I just wasn't interested in them. What WILL save a character, typically, is a full story, but by the time a character gets that, I'm already beyond wanting to delete.

They aren't undead. They're just plain and simply DEAD.

On topic, I would really hate the bulk of the changes suggested, because they're based on a serious misreading of what a Mastermind is or could be, as well as what each powerset represents. Yes, Masterminds can currently very much be played as powerless leaders that base most of their clout on their henchmen. Simply don't take offensive powers. What's difficulty to replicate even now, much less with "weaker" weapons, is a personally strong Mastermind who can kick *** right along with his henchmen. This is an important part of it, and something that would really ruin most of my Masterminds if it were taken away.

Personally, I LOVE the Mercs Assault Rifle. My Mercs Mastermind is using the Redding Rail Rifle from Vanguard, and he just looks AMAZING with that long weapon. Similarly, my Thugs Mastermind looks right at home with both guns, and reducing him to just a figurehead would be really, really bad.

And, really, let's stop trying to make things shoot out of wands, please. No, not everyone wants wands, because not everyone likes that kind of typical wizard. Hell, not everyone who uses darkness is magical at all. Last I checked, the Vampyri were scientifically created.

I'm not against giving Masterminds something more, but I'd like to do that without making massive assumptions about what they should be.

It depends on the cat as much as on the what it has learned. I've had cats who would scratch and bite me with no remorse despite any amount of negative or positive reinforcement, and I've had cats who never drew their claws with me at all. It's basically something you can tell from a very early age. Some kittens will instinctively start playing with claws and teeth, others will only use paws. My last cat was pretty strong in the arms, but outside of freak occurrences, he never clawed or bit me at all. He was very good at telling play from serious business. In fact, he learned to listen to me pretty quick, to the point I didn't even have to yell at him. Some cats are arrogant, they do whatever they want as long as they can get away with it. This guy, though - he'd do something bad a couple of times, scram as soon as I yelled and then eventually just stop doing it.

As I've heard it, cats are pretty good at understanding human speech, at least at a rudimentary level, but their voice boxes limit them to what they can speak. Oftentimes, a cat's meow is its best interpretation of what we say. And while it's true that cats CAN "sort of speak," these deep, humanly voices are actually very hard on their throats. You'll note the cat in the video I linked to is constantly swallowing every time he finishes a breath. It's the equivalent of a person bellowing and shouting. It can be done, but it hurts and it's not something you want to do for no reason. But, basically, cats usually resort to the "I need something" meow, and will then take you to the place where they need something, and you then have to guess what it is that they need there. Often it's obvious. If it takes you to the food bowl (which my cats never actually did), it's hungry. If it takes you to the door, it wants out... Sometimes.

But then there are these odd instances where he'll take you to a blank wall and meow at it, and I could never get that. I'm not sure if it's just a case of me not understanding or there being something there I can't perceive (cats have amazing hearing and sigh), or if the cat is just eccentric. For instance, my last cat kept wanting to go out into the stairway, somewhere he had never been allowed to go and had no reason to want to go. I don't think he had any reason to believe that was a door there, but he kept wanting to. He'd always exist through the first floor balcony, so he should have known that was his "exit." So why keep insisting to go into the stairs? I suspect he may have smelled another cat under the door.

That IS a growl, and cats give it out in a lot of situations, largely when they're upset, annoyed or threatened. It comes out in pulses from this one because it's using its throat to growl and eat at the same time. Most times a cat is talking and people think it's cute, it's actually a growl or a hiss, or even a mating call.

I remember playing one of those talking cats to my old cat, and he just jumped up and went looking around behind my speakers, clearly upset.

*edit*
Ah, there we go: this video. The first cat apparently saying "hello" is making an actual mating call that my cat responded to. I keep hearing them do that at night in the summer, and it's the most dreadful wail. They actually sound like little babies crying in a loud voice. I never found it funny, myself. And the cat saying "Oh Long John" and so forth is actually in a territorial confrontation with another cat, trying to intimidate it.

"Sucks to be you" arguments are hardly convincing. The simple fact is that sticking costume items behind TFs and raids is a plain bad idea, out and out locking certain people out of them entirely. "You must be this tall to ride" restrictions simply never work unless they eventually sort themselves out, and this one just doesn't.

What the developers "intended" (of which we have only guesses, so let's try not to present them as absolute truth) is relevant, but only partially. What's good and what works are just as important, and history has shown that what the developers intend and what's good for the game aren't always the same thing. I can point to a plethora of decisions made by the developers, working as intended, and then either rolled back, altered or tweaked, some of which managed to survive for five years before being rolled back.

Status quo is only really relevant when discussing how to deal with problems NOW. Considering many people have expressed displeasure at the current situation and that this is a suggestions forum, I would say what's abstractly good for the game, rather than what is right now, should be the main subject of conversation. We know what it is, and we don't like it. Let's see if we can't suggest a way for it to improve.

One of the key strengths of City of Heroes is that its very liberal with what it requires you to do. Between the varied ATs, difficulty settings and many, many tasks, a player can pick his own gameplay experience. Solo or on a team, hard challenges or an easy ride, optimal performance or laid-back approach. We are free to tailor our game to our preferences... For the most part.

Now, certain very powerful, very expensive rewards do exist in the game, in terms of Hamidon enhancements, PvP recipes and Inventions Sets and Purples. Obtaining those requires either just a very long time, or very hard tasks. Much harder than for regular rewards. And that's fair - Purples and Hamidon enhancements are stronger than regular ones, so it makes sense they would require a lot more effort and actual raids to acquire. However, unless you can make an argument as to why Vanguard costume items are BETTER than, say, Enforcer items (and they're actually not) or even capes, then you really have no ground to claim that their being much harder to obtain is justified, even if it IS the status quo. I get Enforcer for free, and I can get a cape for a token effort at level 20. Why must I do 4-5 raids to get a suit of armour that is, at best, mediocre?

I don't agree with unlocking costumes in general, but I can live with it where and when it makes sense. But an effort this concentrated is just not worth the reward it yields. Either the effort needs to go down, or the reward needs to become account-wise. Until then, the Vanguard pieces are just not worth the bother.

I remember you from back then, so I can attest to that. You picked a cool name, then and now. It just sounds awesome

For me, I made the name up. I have a tendency to sort of tab through first names and last names in my head until either something clicks or I run out of patience and pick something anyway. I've found names work best not by finding a really good one, but with finding one in a natural way and sticking with it. Familiarity, at least for me, is what counts.

Err... That is to say, I made the name up for my first CHARACTER, whom I'd written about years before I knew about City of Heroes. When it came to the forums, I couldn't use my game account name, so I used the only other name I had, which was that of my namesake character. I have never looked back.

Probably

The problem with ship maps is that they're essentially all the same, practically speaking. Yes, in theory, some have a crate here while others have a crate there, but at the end of the day, each ship map consists of three or four holds with crates scattered about. That's it. And with spaces as big as they are inside there, fights scatter so very much.

I think ship maps are an early example of a mistake the developers really put their foot in with Arachnos maps - the difference between theoretical variety and practical variety. A tileset needs to be varied in such a way that it FEELS varied, not just in such a way that it is varied in theory, but feels all the same. Arachnos maps, though probably each corridor set is unique in doodads and props, end up feeling like miles and miles of identical hallways. It doesn't really matter if there are three pipes or four outside, or whether that thing on the wall is a fan or a boiler. The map is a hallway with doodads. That's it.

That's actually true for the pink caves, too. They're just miles and miles of smooth-bore tunnels with nothing to really make them interesting. Whether they go up or down or bend to the side doesn't change that fact. Cimeroran caves, on the other hand, are a step up from that in a big way. You gave crypt graves in them, you have narrow masonry gates, you have stairs, you have pillars, you have stone walkways, water here and there. Each set piece, even those that ought to be very similar, like "big round chamber," still have some variety between them. It makes the tileset feel a lot less "just corridors" and a lot more diverse.

And why are ship maps always ship HOLDS, anyway? You'd think ships have nothing but. Why not go to the bridge for a change? Why not go to the engine room? Why not go to a passenger liner? You know, like in the old X-Com: Terror From the Deep game? That'd make them a lot more bearable.

Specifically, you need a card that can do credit purchases over the net, but it doesn't need to be a credit card as such. There are a few cards banks offer that are, in fact, debit, in that they're linked to your account and draw money from it, rather than charging up credit you have to pay for later on, but they are accepted for credit purchases just the same.

Also, you'll need a brand new account with brand new boosters and veteran rewards for the US side. Your EU ones won't apply.

Well, to be fair, most of those ARE Cimeroran ruins, so it makes sense they'd use the tileset. We just got an issue that had missions which took place in Cimeroran ruins almost 90% of the time.

I seem to recall reporting a few regarding flight, and especially Hover. Even got modsmacked by Mod8 for posting a step-by-step description when you weren't taking PMs. I haven't checked to see if those loopholes still allow me to bypass all animations (I hope they're gone), but it seems like Hover is a big source for these things. To this day it's causing problems, like the Reveal power not playing most of its animation while Hovering. Ground animations, from what I can see, are more or less perfect, but aerial animations still still have a few surprises in them.

In other news: Dang! And I was so excited about losing draw on Broadsword. Phoey! Here's to hoping you can find some other way to achieve this, because it would have opened up my weapon users to taking non-weapon powers in a big way.

Even if a strong connection doesn't exist between the separate contacts, it's be nice if any connection at all existed between the missions coming from a contact, more than just the contact himself or herself. This isn't the case with Striga. To me, it feels like each contact is nothing more than a glorified Scanner mission giver and that's it. There's no story to them, no narrative. It's just contacts giving out almost completely random missions. Some random missions to a contact I can understand, especially those you'll be levelling out of in another hour or two. But a contact in the 20-25 range? That ought to have SOMETHING to offer beyond just one-off missions.

I'll agree with you that the story of Faultline, in its core, isn't spectacular, but the quality of the writing was never in question here. It's the quality of the implementation that really makes a big difference, and that's key here. In Faultline, the missions are interesting and diverse, there is a narrative you can follow, which gives you missions in a logical storyline, and what you do actually matters in a real, tangible way. In Striga, none of that is true. The missions are BORING to hell and back. Even hunts notwithstanding, I'm going to kick a puppy if I get sent to another ship to click a few glowies or beat up a guy at the end with nothing in-between but a sea of mute, identical thugs. There's no point to any of the missions, because their outcome does not affect the next mission in the queue, and a lot of them are just maintenance busywork, in terms of concept.

One big thing I've tried to keep to when making Architect arcs is to never, ever, have pointless, meaningless or useless missions, tasks or events. You never go to a building and learn nothing. If a mission requires you to get to the end, it's either short or littered with secondary objective or interesting encounters along the way. If you find something important, it's never forgotten by the next mission, and even if it is, it comes back to play a part later on. Just slogging though enemies for the sake of slogging through enemies is not something I need pseudo-story-arcs, or indeed even contacts to do. That's what the Rogue Isles Protector and the PPD Scanner are for.

And, yeah, it's true that you could level out of Penelope and not be level enough for Doc Delilah. Just as you could run out of missions for Julius the Troll and he'll tell you to come back later, and how you can run out of Long Jack missions before you can speak with Tobias Hansen, or how you almost always complete Skipper's missions long before Kelly Nemmers will speak with you. It's a fact of life in all of the newer zones, and it was a fact of line in the old zones, as well. For instance, you can run the Library of Souls, but then you won't be able to follow its next phase, which is the Envoy of Shadows, until you level into the next level band.