They're trying to follow the BTC steps, perhaps. These altcoins actually got different uses, unique characteristics that they're trying to bring to the masses, sadly not everyone bites it.
They don't really have a different use. As you have said, they're following bitcoin which is a payment for all transactions and the same use. There's no difference between the use of bitcoin and these altcoins. They have a preferred industry to be made as a token but that's just the same as bitcoin being a payment for most transactions. It all started from the ICOs which preferring to the industries that they are promoting like in Energy, precious metals, you name it, there are many of them before.
If only those projects come to reality and not just ended up in papers, we will have a better use of crypto in our everyday life. The common problem in most blockchain projects is that even if they have noble use case, actual implementation is hard. If the team is not hard working enough, they won't get active users to use their platform, which will end up abandoning the platform. Remember those projects exploring in science, logistics, name it, where are they now? Implementation is a challenge for them as well as the funds needed to move forward with their developments.
I agree to you. But that's not the scenario that we see from day to day living. With bitcoin, we can use it for most transactions that we do online and somehow, the adoption is increasing but not mostly to the local areas where we're living in.
We just have to give up the ideas about ICOs and other projects that are making crowd funding through their tokens. If they have an idea, they don't have to release a token and just go with the regular crowd funding.