Compared now, investors, even retail or new, are now careful and these projects are at the next level already because they are now competing with each other to bring the best especially if you are in IDO, IEO, launch pool, etc. There are already a lot of ways in token/coin offerings for investors that are more regulated and safer.
Back then, they were reliable and they created lots of opportunities both for investors and bounty hunters, but when the scammers and crooks got themselves the way to create their own ICOs, that's when darkness began an opportunity turned into nightmares for most of those investors who trust the projects they invested but it turned out to be fake and has no value in other words shit coins. It goes like that for most of the altcoins back then, I was lucky enough to invest in real ones and promoted others that are actually paying and have some good projects that were successful in the past few years.