If we want this space to truly evolve, we need to come up with new stuff and test it out. Alts are most of the time testing grounds for large coins, the same way PoS was a testing ground for Ethereum and the same way some coins adopted SegWit long before Bitcoin did.
Many altcoins are not even sustainable for the long period, thus that already rules most of them out as having a future, nor any real use case that quite a lot of people would want to take advantage of. Partnerships help to increase the hype around the coins, that's why most of the project owners want to gather news of one form of partnership or the other, whether it's real or not, they could use it to momentarily sell their products to investors who are moved only by hype.
The only way things could prolly get better is if profit is no longer the sole reason why people are in the network, if they really want to create something useful with a sustainable use case, then money doesn't have to be the initial motive, but as long as quick ROI remains the case when altcoins is in the picture, then most of their products is going to be more or less a reincarnated one or an outright shitcoin.