It's hard to replicate what Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and all those early coins did before the crypto space started going crazy. Most of what we have now are just copycats and scams, masquerading as the coins of the future.
Mining such new POW coins today is just a gamble that may or may not pay off.
Then it was also a game, and the miners did not believe in the future of Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum and other coins for mining.
The difference was only in the payback period of mining. When these terms were reduced, the number of miners was added, and vice versa. But there are no good alternatives for GPU mining yet.