"On The Other Claw...."

A friend who's really into CoH has given me some perspective on this one - characters play through missions trying to stick with their character's personality, and then 80% of the game actually happens as conversation over the channels and so on. I think it's an interesting parallel to tabletop RPGs - if a player can think of something, especially if it makes sense, they do it, and sometimes the rules aren't set up for the game the players want.