Discussing some game mechanics with a friend he told me something like : "We need this mechanic, so I'm going to do it as every one else did". I was choked.
Anyway I'm agree about one thing in his sentence : we don't always need to reinvent the wheels. But what if we still had wooden wheels on our modern cars ?
In fact that's where I strongly disagree with my friend, not that we always need to build new and different game mechanics to fit the same goal, but that we have to smartly adapt existing one to perfectly fit new games.
For example, what about a merchant mechanic in a game ? Should we copy/paste a standard merchant with standard buy/sell mechanics ?
I used the car metaphor before so here's the same question for a car : what about an energy source for the car ? Should we use the standard oil energy ?
You can obviously respond yes to these questions. But will this response perfectly fit your game and your car design and purpose ?
I want to point the truth that copy/paste is the best way to get wrong. Before making any choice you must evaluate your need :
Why your game needs this mechanic ?
Is this mechanic fitting in your game rules and background ?
For what purpose player will use it ?
Will it be useful for the player ?
Could it be a more enjoyable way to present it to the player ?
Etc.
When you are sure you need this mechanic ask yourself the same questions and adapt it to your game until it seems to be indispensable.
To conclude my little though, don't let some copy/paste features kill your game uniqueness. Features are good only when they have meaning; when they fit and serve the game. For me, no feature is always better than bad feature.