I think coin competition is not healthy just for competition itself. If don't see how a copy paste coin from bitcoin or litecoin could survive, it's not just change in the reward and block time that will change something enough to make it live. If a copy of bitcoin come, ASIC jump in doing pump and dump and leave with very high difficulty. Same thing happen with new scrypt coin when all gpu jump in to do easy money.
I'll give you $500 and week to either buy an ASIC or a GPU. Tell me which one you stand a chance of obtaining. GPUs are not ASICs. GPUs have a low barrier of entry. Sure you are trounced by the farmers but that is the free market. If you can grow your GPU farm from 1 to many by being better than the existing farms you win in the free market. ASICs have blocked the road for the average user. You need $20k and a prayer or an established GPU farm that will get you next to nothing in BTC. Bitcoin needs an upgrade.
I wasn't complaining about asic or big gpu farm. I mean a coin with no innovation is easy to kill, a good example is FTC last time I checked next difficulty retarget was 20 days... with block each 16 minute. It seem like a temporary or constant failure for a coin supposed to be as fast as litecoin and it was not done by few big gpu farm but by the mass of gpu miner.