How can a team know what a particular audience needs? It's impossible. But any developer knows for sure that users love contests and free coin giveaways.
The community people, the crypto users are just easy to read. What we all wanted are kind of activies which we could get something from it which can be a good thing for the present or even in the future. Crypto bounty campaigns as well as other giveaways that certain project does is what get the people attracted from it. So it is not that impossible for the developers to know what the community wants as they also speak for what they demand and suggest all for the better of all.
Bounty is not required for good projects. If the project is interesting for the community, then without distributions it will become popular.