I look for utility, benefits it proportionates to adopters, holders and investors. It usually comes as benefits inside an already existing platform or service. So you acquire the altcoin to guarantee extra advantages inside a service platform. If the offer is interesting and rewarding, I decide to invest on the altcoin. It's not easy, though, because most offers don't worth. Some look really good at the beginning, but on the practice it's completely different than you firstly expected.
Altcoins are always a risky deal, so if you want to avoid all the troubles, frustration and regrets of adopting them, I would advise you to just invest in Bitcoin currency that you won't have any headaches later. It's exactly what it promises to be, without any hidden nasty surprises in the end.
sometime what makes thing difficult in choosing alts with utility is that some of the utilities are truly garbage not even worth mentioning.
like most of the L2 coins right now which if you see in the chart it's quite dying, why? because their governance token worth to none, just overly inflated token valuation by the VCs without real utility at all.
these governance token only being used for proposal and that's it and mind you most proposel get voted by the project team because they usually own large sums, though there are some case where community wins indeed but I just see that kind of utility as gimmick at best.
I mean i know market is bad right now but these L2 literally already dumping from before BTC crash and now just got even worse.