GU had a great headstart, there were some big news like the 15million sale, hiring the mtg developer and the 60k card that potentially attracted many new players. For me it was the play-to-earn mechanic that made things interesting. But right now there is no pte. And some other aspects of a good tcg are missing as well.
But this is just the beta!?
Sure it is. But today, this is an important step in gathering (and maintaining!) a healthy playerbase. When I started to play, there were mechanics for both f2p and whales that made the game interesting. You could earn raffle tokens and sell them and the genesis sale had not ended, so everyone could dump as much money in this game as they wanted. And you could earn genesis packs as well! Whales wanted to collect as many cards as possible and others just wanted to get good cards for their decks.
And now?
If you start as a new player right now, you are left with only core cards. Which means you can only play premade decks for a looooooong time. They even increased the amount of exp required to level up. As a new player this can be super frustrating, mostly earning the cards you already know from premade decks and still not being abled to craft a custom one. And no way to speed that up.
But markets open soon!
Yes, but they are only interesting for players who want to get rid of their cards or know exactly what they want. You can only rebuild successful decks or have to fear that you spent money the wrong way. The pount is that the game isn't as exciting as it could be to keep new players attracted, and with every day the developers miss out on potential players that might spend some money later and that help stabilize the meta.
What to do?
There are several ways to change that. Of course a new card set would be best, but this won't happen soon. Making draft more attractive via some reward would help make players experiment with new things. If they like a card, they might even be tempted to buy it from the market place. Instead everyone is playing ranked because they dont want to miss out on new core cards and in the end they are bored of grinding and quit GU. Do something!