Some variants are fairly poor without the proper upgrades. Tank commander, iron citron - reload upgrade x2; any rose - homing; frozen citron - ice; hotrod chomper - digestion x2; alien flower - spore cloud upgrades. Etcetera.
Then there're the ones that are utterly useless - iron citron, armor chomper - health... As noted above, a few characters benefit greatly from the health upgrade.
First of all: these upgrade do make a difference. You may not see it but it is there. It also depends on your play style.
Take a Scientist for example. He got 100 HP and 110 with the upgrade. Why does that matter? Because with 110 he can survive a critical hit from a Future Cactus which does 102 damage.
Secondly: it would not be fair to have a bunch of high level players, with many hours of experience in the game, have access to powerful upgrades no newbie can compete with. It would simply ruin it for newcomers when they literally need upgrades to succeed. So what we got is a mix of potential upgrades and fairness.
There are a few characters that perform better after certain upgrades, like Rose with her homing for example, but even without and the right play style it is possible to succeed. Even more so as a team.
The dev team is focusing the upgrades too heavily on online-multiplayer, which angers me a lot. They should stop for one moment and think about the 'Solo Play' and 'Team VS AI' Aspects of the game; two areas that need the most attention. If this doesn't happen, there will be no fun.
When I went to this game from the first one, it really felt like they slowed EVERYBODY down and made EVERYBODY do less damage.
Then you come to find out that everybody is allowed to have a speed upgrade, damage upgrade and reload/ammo upgrades.
In the first one, your upgrades were set and unlocked through the stickershop. Once unlocked they were there and not interchangeable. There were 3.
The Upgrades are meant to compliment your playstyle. People nitpick the usefulness of Speed Boost over Life Upgrade, but I've come to use both on most healing classes. Just have fun with it :D
