there are many better alternatives to waves in crypto world. they are brand new and faster. waves already lost its hype and investors aimed to other platforms. i think the main reason behind it is that waves crew did nothing to keep waves price more stable and stronger.
You are indeed correct that there are other alternatives to Waves out there but I'm not sure if there is any better than them. It is actually on a level of personal preference so I respect your judgement on it.
Regarding to its price, the devs made it clear in the early days of this coin that they will not provide any buy wall nor manipulate the market just to support it. The reason behind that is it will just provide false growth and pseudo-price stability. What they want is to deliver the features that they outlined in their roadmap and let the market decide for its proper price. In that way, we will have a more organic way of progress. If you want a project to succeed, don't just rely on hype. Developers are not here to please all the investors, they are here to deliver the project that they started.