It really pains me to see investors complaining about how they lost their hard earned money or savings in a project. But the bitter truth is that most of these people are lazy to do their research and they just get in a project for the promised ROI or because some analyst hyped the project for them.
That's the reason why we should do our own research before we invest our money. You are right that many ICOs are being hyped by many and we have to be careful about that. In the world of cryptocurrency wherein, we do not have any claims or security on our investment, so we should be more alert and cautious about everything.
The main reason why you should consider putting your money in any project (either ICO, IEO or STO) should be because you are totally convinced that the project have an innovative idea with a working product that solves an existing problem (very important) and with a very good and experienced team to lead it to success.
For a long-term perspective, studying and understanding the project and assessing how will it contribute for the better of the society will help you decide if that project is worth to invest for a long period of time. But in trading, you won't need to know the project itself, you only based your decision to buy the coin based on its chart.