Agreed!
What I miss in CoH most, isn't so much the grinding but how in Roleplaying, if it was AE, well I could play against the random number god. Inspirations could be saved or stockpiled, buffs and debuffs could make a team better and weaken enemies ect. There was still strategy to the gameplay that, I just don't feel when I try roleplaying in paragon chat with some people and the dice rolls. Course I can also say there are times I feel I don't enjoy rping with a fair number these days(There are those I do enjoy rpin with, and I say it's great fun).
I think what I miss a lot regarding that? Diversity, there isn't a lot if any in paragon chat, because there isn't as many people playing. On paragon chat I sometimes feel that it's starting to suffer the dreaded "community is to small" syndrome, in which a community gets so small people's major problems stick out far more, and the closed-mindedness you begin to see rears it's ugly head far more. I'll give my favorite example of this from another series: The unreal franchise.
One time when Unreal Tournament 3 was in development a screenshot was released of Malcolm holding the new rocket launcher, which had 3 separate small round rocket launch tubes. This was in contrast to a similar looking rocket launcher in the released earlier Unreal Championship 2, the only difference was the rocket launch tubes were rectangular. Players complained about the change in appearance. You have to remember the unreal community at that point had shrunk so small you saw the most narrow minded members remaining.
Players complained.....about a single insignificant change in the appearance of ONE weapon.
A lack of diversity imo, it breeds narrow mindedness. I'm feeling that way a little about paragon chat, there are a lot of magic and paramilitary themed characters, but you don't see anything like mad science, or tech-heavy. Heck I feel I don't even see proper natural toons comparable to batman(or Manticore). You see a few, but they are few and far between. There is little diversity though, and it hurts the rp community I feel. When the game was back there were way more people rping and a far better variety of toons, go figure.