There are two points in this post that I do not agree with you. The good old days are ICO already over and all goods projects get funded by Private Investors nowadays. It is very hard to find any good project. The best place to determine the kind of projects that are coming up can be checked on the Bounty Board.
Use Cases
I only look for projects that have use cases in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. I have seen many real word projects either dying out or being unable to sustain for the long term.
That's a good idea actually. We don't know how good coins with real world use cases might perform but we can actually get a really good insight for the coins with crypto ecosystem usecase. For instance using DOT for cross chain interoperability is quite a unique idea.
Non Repeated
There are several successful projects which are nothing but an upgraded version of an existing project. They have been very successful. It all depends on how effective a project is and whether is it able to solve the pain area.
Again, that's very true. Even I have noticed projects which are a better version of existing projects.
They performed really well when compared to previous projects. We just have to find out how the project is making the same thing better.