Well an ICO thats not relying to softcap or hardcap is not an ICO. As the definition says its an Initial Coin Offering and they are doing that to raise funds to continue developing their project. A project that doesnt need to reached either softcap or hardcap is not an ICO and i know some projects now that did not do an ICO but are quite successful.
yes, sometimes reaching hardcap is not enough to guarantee that the project will run smoothly because not all teams can develop the project well even though their capital is large.
sometimes they don't even care about their coins anymore and only focus on developing their projects so sometimes the coins are left without any development.
therefore we must choose ICO which has a responsible developer.