That's just bizarre.
You have to design each power to have effects and modifiers that make them different. Just off the top of my head, because I haven't messed with it in a while, a fire-based power might have something like a 'contagious' advantage and a sort of damage over time advantage to show that fire lingers and spreads, with the partial limitation that the 'contagious' effect spreads only to flammable materials and items. A mystical sledgehammer might have a knockback effect. A guy with a laser pistol might have autofire, penetrating, and so forth. The dragon's acid breath might be linked to a corrosion power that degrades armor and equipment, and have a cone shape advantage.
So yeah, every damage power is going to feel the same if you don't put any effort into designing the power to do what you want to do. In many other games, all the powers are already set up for you and you pick from a list, but you don't have as many options for customization or choices to do whatever you want. When you fully design that power in a system like M&M, with status effects, blast shapes, ranges, limitations and advantages, it comes out just like any power in any system. You can make Flaming Sphere in M&M work exactly as it does in D&D. But you have to make it, just as someone made Flaming Sphere. For D&D, someone made Flaming Sphere. In M&M, you get to make it yourself.
You have to make the powers different. Otherwise, they're not different. That shouldn't come as a shock. That's how pure point buy systems usually work.
And even with just the descriptors (different from modifiers, the "fluff"), which don't technically do anything, they can matter when coming up against someone that has a resistance or immunity to that power type. That's no different than D&D or any other system, though... it doesn't matter much if it's Force damage or Thunder damage until you come up against a resistance (except for the modifiers you build into the powers.)
It's equally strange, to me, at least, that you would just give everyone damage powers, let alone damage powers that haven't been designed to be different. In a system where you can have someone whose body is a portal to their own pocket dimension and they can grapple their foes and stuff them in what basically amounts to a portable hole, or have someone who can turn their enemies' weapon into a liquid puddle, or create a solid hologramatic landscape that turns city streets into jungle environments, creating chaos, difficult terrain, creating swing lines and trapping foes... why would you even want everyone to just have damage powers?
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