Yes, I think this is what NUD is really lacking to gain attention right now.  It is tough to hit a block unless you are running powerful cloud mining instances, and I shut mine off long ago.  I am not even sure it is profitable to cloud mine at these prices.  Fact is most of the alt "community" are miners in some shape or form.  People seem to be interested in NUD, they come in, mine for 2 days, get frustrated because they get nothing, and give up.

Pools will increase awareness, grow the community, donations will increase and our devs can afford to spend more time developing the coin.

NUD does feel a bit like the early days of XMR, largely ignored but with a small group following it's every development.  I know I kept looking at that Monero thread thinking "It's interesting and new, but I don't feel like figuring out anything else new right now" and kept putting looking into it on the back burner.  If NUD follows a similar path, I'd hate to not be there from the beginning!