You are very much correct.
Quote from author of the post about HIVE common mistake which is distribution.

I hope that the rewards which are spread to players are attainable by FTP users somehow, I am not playing to get my investment back.

As you can see even author notice that distribution might be the problem here, as rewards most likely will go to elite, while team might ignore low level users.

Many of you on HIVE like to pretend that humans do better work at spreading rewards and making more happier people(users) than properly set algorithms. Which eventually causes high concentration of power and stagnation, cause this is very much utopian vision based on assumption that humans are perfect.

This game is great example for that. Possible team will do same mistakes and focus on rewarding small group of players(winners) who don't care that much about rewarding but fun, while game will lose free to play players, players playing cheap, players hoping to earn some money for playing.

This is numbers game and you can imagine there is many ways to create interesting entanglements between numbers that would create activity, more players.

new users, many low level users > existing users, users with power, users with money

simplest reality is that we need people both on Hive and in this game while focus, vision, distribution is very thin

ogame was always pay-to-win