There maybe some factors affecting why Waves price isn't improving like the devs are still trying to look for more ways to improve it or something. Also, eventhough some coins are the same in nature there are still factors that may affect the coin's growth and everything depends on how its developers and the team behind it work on its growth. Most of the altcoins are based on ETH platform so I guess that is one advantage of Etherium over other altcoins.