Too Many Choices?

I have an RL friend who just came to CoH last week. He bought Going Rogue, and has already made a ton of characters, deleted them all, and started making characters again. He has yet to get above level 10 on any character. Last night he and I were discussing it and he made the comment that the game just has so many choices available he can't make up his mind what he wants to play. It's obvious from talking to him he's beginning to get frustrated with it. We even went through every AT and discussed each one in detail, in terms of both strengths and weaknesses.

My friend has also begun to complain about how "slow" low level characters are (I believe he means kill speed). I keep telling him that he needs to stick with something long enough to get at least to the SO range and he will see that issue resolve itself. This doesn't seem to have made much of an impression. Every night it's the same scenario: he makes up a new character, and I either exemp down to his level or SK him up to mine. He gets to 8 or 9, then makes something else the next night and the process starts over. At this point he's tried every AT, some of them more than once.

So how in the devil do I get him past this? If he would just stick with one character for a few days, long enough to get to the 20's, he would see that the pace of the game really picks up. Any ideas how I can help him get going? Or do I just need to grin and bear it while he rerolls constantly every single night? Normally I encourage people to try lots of alts, but he's actually burning himself out on the game entirely by cycling through so many characters so fast.

I had a friend who complained that "everything's the same." He had forty characters, none above level 10, at the time. He got whiney when it took him too long to get the reward of new levels.

I had another friend who, it looked like, was potentially going the same route. So we started the "get her a 50" plan: every Tuesday we were going to play the same characters from 8 till 10 PM, and we weren't going to play them any other days. (it mushroomed and now our novelty group with the Elvis impersonator and the jello shot waitress is a top 100 SG on Infinity, or was last time I looked.)

Sounds like part of the problem may be that he's seeing what you can do with your, level 50, tuned and heinous, character. His characters don't work like that! (I don't know if you're purpled or what, but exemplared characters have serious advantages over true new players- even if it's just Sands of Mu and modified SO's.)

Start a new character with him. Say something like "Do what you like the rest of the time, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays we're playing the Stomper Twins" [or whoever they are.] You'll be level 5 when he's level 5 and he won't feel like "maybe if I play a rad/sonic I can keep up THIS time".

It's a theory, maybe a bad theory, but it's the only one I've got.

Fulmens makes some good points. Ironically, your friend's taking one of the game's real strengths (its variety and replay value) and making it into a liability. It sounds like you've already tried to strategize and get him invested into a character and that hasn't really worked. At this point I can think of a few possible course of action you might take...

• Try to get him to commit to a single character. You know this person better than we do and it sound like you've already attempted this, but this is how most people with tons of characters eventually make it through to 50. Take it beyond 'toons' to characters and see if you can get him psyched about one particular character. For some people this means backstory, costume, and/or RP elements. For others it might mean designing the character's build out to the Nth degree and working out all the powers and slotting to have something on the horizon to build towards. If he's played other MMOs before, the concept of a "main" might be familiar to him.
• Regular playtime. I think Fulmens has a good point about exemplared characters - if at all possible, try to play something his level that complements his choice. This may involve some sacrifice for you or you playing powersets and roles you mighrt not otherwise choose for yourself. If you do end up in a support role I recommend playing a buffer. Debuffers participate in combat and have direct effects on the enemy but as a buffer you work through your teammates. This may make him feel like the star and the 'real hero'. A bit childish, but may be effective.
• Consider making low-level IOs for your friend's usage - especially if you happen to have a character with Field Crafter. Store them in the base for him. If he's the metagamer/OCD type and wants to work with you on Mids, you could get him a low-level build complete with low-level Sets and fund it yourself. A new player probably won't have the investment or the patience to research, buy up and craft Sets himself even if you provided the inf, but if you do it for him it may have an impact.

Sounds like he's seeing your level 50 characters in action and expecting his level 5 to be just as awesome.

In not getting anything past level 10, he hasn't gotten any powersets' signature powers yet.

Examples:

If he's played a scrapper, most of them haven't gotten their mez protection or sigbificant survivability yet.

A Fire Controller gets their signature power (Hot Feet) before it has the ability to actually utilize it effectively because it doesn't have Flashfire yet.

Tanks aren't particularly tough at level 8. He sees yours at 50 and wonders why his keeps dying.

It really sounds like your friend isn't realizing that they need to actually LEVEL these characters before they get good. No character will be as good at level 10 as they are at 50, because the majority of the good stuff is level 20 or above. By redoing the first 10 levels over and over, he's subjecting himself to the weakest point of any character's existence, and deleting them before they get a chance to show him what they can really do.

You need to find a way to convince him to stick with one character long enough to start getting the better powers and better enhancements. Seems like his mistake is constantly deleting them instead of keeping them around for later.

Thanks for the tips guys.
I actually haven't run any of my seriously "IO'd out" characters with him, and did in fact start a new Brute on Friday. We were the same level for one day. I think the mistake I made was in playing the Brute on Saturday and jumping ahead of him. Perhaps when he rerolls again (tonight most likely ) I'll start another character and limit its play to only when he's on. That may help.

Might be worth level pacting with him for the next round of re-rolls. At the very least it will stop you from overtaking him, and might even help him get past the blahs of the early levels if you do a little extra leveling on the side. Just don't let your friend delete that character - he might want to shelve it for a while, but deleting it would make the pact pointless.

Tell him not to delete toons, just roll an alt if he wants. There should be enough slots for him to make a new toon and maybe come back to his other toons after some break time..

Also, having some other buffers on the team will help him feel more powerful. Playing a larger team will help too with steam rolling along. A kinetic with speed boost will help him along too.

Other have given some good advice like level pacting etc.

My advice is from the content side: take him in a group of 8 people on Flashfire's arc in the hollows on a weekend or other time when you can do all of the missions in one sitting.

Have a second character with a pre-loaded bank job mission and take him through that next (also get a team for it) without having to run the 5 radio missions that are rather boring and repetative.

Getting some of the juicy bits of the game under his belt will help get him attached to the character who pulled it off.

The Vazhilok Wasting disease is another good story to duo, but might be too high level.

Have 'em roll a claws/regen scrapper :-)