I'm looking at starting a steampunk campaign. I have a storyline under construction, and I'm really excited about it.
The players are coming from a D&D game. All the characters in D&D are superheroes. I realize that a first level wizard is a crappy superhero, but give them a few levels, and they're all superhuman. Anyway, in D&D you are invested in your character, largely because of anticipation. Next level or in a few levels, you get this power you've been waiting for, etc.
Now D&D just won't work for my story. I've played Hero before and love the way it's built. My favorite thing about the system is that it's so open-ended. Sadly, the worst thing about the system is that it's so open-ended.
So too late to make a long story short: How do you guys make character progress interesting in a Hero System game for non-super characters?