I would say a hook, familiarity, and quick game progression are traits of a quick playerbase (mind you they might not be the highest of quality playerbase).
For that reason alone, copy and paste games succeed because there is only slight differences to games that they’ve played before (theme change, storyline change, a concotion of multiple games the user has previously engaged with).
All that being said, at this point copy and paste games are a race of metrics, and if you don’t know how to take advantage of each metric, you won’t be able to get your card in the deck. These people making copy and paste stuff have a lot of experience with higher player counts and maintaining audiences through monetization, suspense, progression, social status, self flexing, branding, and more.
I’d say develop what makes you feel good. It’s incredibly hard to make a game you have zero passion for. If you can’t get excited about the vision, it’s probably not worth pursuing unless you can crunch it out in a day or two.
Develop what makes you happy and don’t worry about these guys that have been at the copy and paste factory for the last 5 years, you’ll have more fun and could potentially strike gold with your creativity! 