Rewards for Being a Hero
Not only does CoH reward players through double-XP weekends, new issue releases, and other special events, but you also get bonuses for how long you've played. Paragon Rewards is the new system for rewarding players, which has taken over from the older Veteran Rewards program which gave special gifts to players after every three months of playtime.
Claiming Your Paragon Rewards
To claim your Paragon Rewards, you'll need to click on the Paragon Rewards symbol, which is part of your default user interface setup. A picture follows, below:
Once you've clicked, the following meter appears, with many different slots and notches. (If you played City of Heroes before the Paragon Rewards System came out, your old-school Veteran Rewards will already be grandfathered in, and you'll have some slots and notches filled in already.) A screenshot of my Paragon Rewards is below:
Unlike the Vet Rewards of old, the Paragon Rewards System allows you to pick and choose which rewards you want, to an extent. You have to get everything out of one level before you can advance to the next tier of rewards, but you can choose WHEN you get those rewards instead of having to pick them all in a preconceived order.
To check out what each of the slots are before you slot your tokens in them, simply hover your mouse cursor over them for a brief description.
Note the Rewards Token counts at the top, seen in this screenshot:
This shows you how many Tokens you have left to slot. Pay attention to these--you can only slot each Token one time, so you'll need to slot carefully. It's much like slotting Enhancements.
What These Rewards Can Do
Paragon Rewards can offset character weaknesses by providing new powers; they can also give you access to new powersets entirely, and new costume pieces. Plus, there are decorative pets and helpful non-combat powers that can aid your gameplay.
It's really up to you which Rewards you go for. I would suggest reading through the descriptions of each Reward Tier and its slots before going ahead to slot your Tokens--that way, you'll get a much better idea of what you're getting and whether it'll really be useful to you at this point in your heroic development.