Most developers have only one vision which is making money that is why many coins doesn't grow and they failed because they didn't see the vision ahead.
As an investor, we should always check the motivation of the developers and we can see that if they are not dedicated to the fulfillment of their roadmap and stop communicating with the community, in the first place investors invest because of what they've seen on the roadmap and whitepaper, this is where the potential starts but if the developers are not motivated investors will dump the coin and the project becomes a failure.
The commitment of the developers is key, after all not everyone can be like satoshi and develop a completely original idea from zero, even if the project in which a set of developers is working is derivative as long as they are willing to work hard then their project can succeed, the issue is that many developers do not really have that drive and instead they just want to get money out of the community and as soon as they do they lose interest in actually trying to make their project work.