Yeah, I know what you mean. But as long as you're going to be playing a game that wasn't exactly meant for the RP crowd you'll always have to try and ignore stuff.
Be glad this isn't World of Warcraft, where you get to try playing a Druid who helps cut down a rainforest by aiding orcs, and who corrupts nature for undead. 
I'm not so sure on that; I think the world has to rationalise things so that they 'become' viable. (For instance, the concept of money : If it was directly translatable, then any big SG could buy Crey).
Therefore you have to start on the principles behind Cryptic's decisions and reverse engineer them.
For Training enhancements, say, I pick up a level 40 Accuracy Training after defeating a Sapper, then sell it to Ghost Falcon and buy a Magic Damage SO (Fury of Joule).
Rationale : As the Sapper is defeated, I spot that his backpack has small straps on it that if I shot at, it would cause the backpack to collapse.
This information isn't really that useful to me, as I'd not be good enough to pull off such a shot in the heat of battle, but I pass the information onto Ghost Falcon. He thanks me and says
"Great! Some of the younger heroes could use a little help. Is there anything I can do for you in return, Silver Weasel?"
I reply "Well, my powers are tethered to the Earth, but I need to get a bit more "Umph" out of them."
He thinks for a moment and says "Well, I've heard tell of a Hero called Joule who used his own emotions to tap into extra power. He wound himself up internally so that his mind would be more focussed? That might help."
I say "Cool!" and remember to get anger flowing next time before I use my Nova.
That sort of idea isn't really possible within a limited world, but a bit of thought can do most things 
Influence/Infamy and now Prestige are painful concepts. Everyone equtes them with money, which they aren't supposed to be. Unfortunately, even Cryptic get it wrong and use Inf in a way that makes it represent cash.
Part of the problem is that Cryptic don't get the stuff right half the time. One example is the two different Warwolf origin stories.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
Maybe they're both true.....
We haven't even looked at the idea of Praetorian Heroes yet..
And with Dimension/Time travel, there's been at least 7 versions of Spidey, 8 of Bats, 5 of Supes co-existing.
And that's without thinking that there has to be around 10,000 super heroes in a small town.
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but accually afecting change ? no, because if you change something you would never have gone back to change it in the first place
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Pah! Total tripe. There's ways around that one.
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really ? 
Sure there is. Example: once you exist outside the normal timestream, you become immune to the reality-changing effects of being within it, hence your previous memories and actions, as far as you and the universe are concerned, remain unchanged.
Something similar works in the Feng Shui rpg, once characters enter the Netherworld, their memories remain intact in the event of any changes to the timeline.
ok, so what happens after you re-enter the time line ? at that point you are subject to temproal laws once more, so you back you go to where you started.
Only if temporal laws operate retro-actively.
In Feng Shui, for example, once you've entered the Netherworld, you're completely protected. Even if time changes while you're in your own timeline, you retain all of your memories, appearance, abilities, everything. Even if you don't exist anymore, you're still there, but there are no records of you, and no-one has any memory of you.
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but accually afecting change ? no, because if you change something you would never have gone back to change it in the first place
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Pah! Total tripe. There's ways around that one.
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really ?
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Well, there is in comic-book reality. Possibly in real reality, but it tends to rely on certain people. I worked out a system for a character I created, started playing with and dumped. Within the "GG Universe" there's ways to solve it.
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
It's time travel, ffs.
Stop being such nerds or I'll smack you.
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Stop being such nerds or I'll smack you.
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But... but... :<
Fine then, no time travel discussions.
Does inverting the phase varience field and reversing the polarity of the dilithium crystals while channeling the warp field through the deflector dish actually work? If so, why don't we solve the Terra Reactor trial via Geordie LaForge science?
Neh, spocky had a way easier approach. Fly around the sun!
lol.
Hum. Clasically, the people who actually make the change are 'immune' to the effects (in fiction). Physics would probably not give the option.
However, in reality, some of the more drastic effects we see in fiction are also pretty implausible. Take the recent time travel disaster movie (bsed on a book) where someone treads on a butterfly in the Jurassik period and when they get back, the world is overrun with dinosaurs. In practice, the events leading to the demise of the dinosaurs would have happened anyway; a butterfly can't stop climate change, massive volcanic activity and incoming meteorites.
Less massive, go back and kill Hitler to stop the second world war. Probably wouldn't work since Hitler wasn't exactly responsible for WW2, someone else would have set it in motion instead.
However, the real issue is that it wouldn't be that tough to change something that would stop time travel being invented... so how did you get there?
Disclaimer: The above may be humerous, or at least may be an attempt at humour. Try reading it that way.
Posts are OOC unless noted to be IC, or in an IC thread.
You can't change history due to the quantum nature of time, apparently.
As you have seen the outcome of what came before, any action you take is essential for that outcome, and there's nowt you can do to change it. So even if you went back with the intention of killing Hitler in 1924, he'd survive as we already know he did.
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It's time travel, ffs.
Stop being such nerds or I'll smack you.
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Bring it Any arena, any time.
There's an easy way to solve most of paradoxical problems and that's 3d Space.
Elimintates 99% of the Paradox's by creating multiple time-streams.
Hello? Quantum nature of time! Paradox is impossible! If you can do something, it had to be done to allow history to reach the point where you travel back in time!
Apart from that relies on Cause-Effect actuality, which doesn't exist in a non-linear time sequence.
It relies on time passing from past to future, yes. But it rests on the basic fact that observation of an object in a quantum flux collapses the possibilities to one single outcome. Thus any action you take in the past is essential to make the world how it was when you observed it the moment you travelled back in time. Cause and Effect is irrelevant, only the outcome, which you already have seen and cannot change.
I hope the CoH RPG will be answering many of the apparent plot-holes of the setting. And if you have read the comic-books and the RPG preview, some of them arent that hard to figure out. For instance, within a RPG environment it is better assume the population of heroes in the city is not as enormous as it is in the computer game environment.
I dont believe Paragon City is anything like a police state. There are controls only to go in and out of unsafe areas, after all, and the police drones are probably AIs with the same rights and law-enforcement powers than any other cop. It is, however, a city under siege, with areas controlled by an alien army (the Ritki) and powerful terrorists groups (the Devouring Earth). I can believe a couple years after an alien invasion decimated the armies of the world, destroyed half the city and killed 90% of the heroes (and probably a huge number of the city policemen too) the city is still split in districts protected by forcefields (which probably have a ceiling over which heroes and villains cant fly) and super-beings are encouraged to join crime-fighting even if they are too young, too quirky or too busy with other jobs to join the police force or the army. In a normal environment (and in the comics it is mentioned in other cities of America) I assume there would be far more control over the crime-fighters, a few of whom, no doubt, abuse their hero licenses. But right now the law needs all the help they can get.
However, I do admit that some elements of the background of the city feel very dumb. For instance, I am still trying to process that the Hollowing was before the Ritki War (in a time when both heroes and cops were strong and numerous, a gang blew up a huge chunk of the city and took over, and still has almost complete control 5 years later?).
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It relies on time passing from past to future, yes. But it rests on the basic fact that observation of an object in a quantum flux collapses the possibilities to one single outcome. Thus any action you take in the past is essential to make the world how it was when you observed it the moment you travelled back in time. Cause and Effect is irrelevant, only the outcome, which you already have seen and cannot change.
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Interesting theory but it's got one big hole. Observation is a Cause/Effect as well; therefore by altering your history, you actually alter the future you have seen and the reason for doing it. Therefore, once you change history, you also change your reasons for changing history as well as possibly unwinding it.
This potential problem takes your relative stable state to one of Quantum fissure; hence re-creating yourself around time to cause the least damage.
E.G. If you travelled back in time to kill your father; at the point where his timeline shifted to the point where he couldn't father you; your own self would be placed in a quantum state where you both did and did not exist; and so to general perception you would appear unable to react to the 'normal' world you came from.
Hence, perhaps, explaining ghosts...
Therefore, Time protects itself by removing the Paradox before Time allows it to happen; in a similar way to a bath overflowing.
Quod Erat Demonstrandum
It should be noted that even the police don't like using the Drones; they have a lot of worries about them, and the "accidents" they've had are the exact reason the Drones haven't been deployed in a city-wide enviroment.
Also remember that from a Roleplay viewpoint, stats and the likes aren't "real"; as evidenced in CoV's Breakout level, the police drones are quite easily over-whelmed and destroyed under certain circumstances.
This Drone Disagrees
The drones are just extremely strong for game mechanics, to keep people safe in safe spots.
If there's one thing I've learned while playing MMORPGs it's that you RP aside from game mechanics, not around them. Trying to "explain" non RP things in an RP way tends to just lead to headaches.
For me, anything that doesn't specifically happen in an IC mode of operation with other IC people around didn't happen at all if I choose for it not to have happened. Therefore I have no problems accepting missions my villain wouldn't, my team doesn't RP in the heat of combat anyway. Why insist that it happened and then try and reason it out when just saying it didn't will save me so many headaches?
This is why I'm glad I'm an Arts graduate, not a Science graduate
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Just try to ignore it and you'll be fine.
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That's really the problem highlighted in the OP. There's an awful lot of stuff we just -have to- ignore in order to rationalise the setting into a believable and consistent world.