Most of the people who actively play Hunt are actually veterans, so you saying most players won't stick to the game after a month of two is absolutely wrong.

I have over 4000 hours in this game. I played the first beta available and was a big part of the discord community back then (I was the pope of the Church of the Derringer). Back in beta many things were actually better, and most people who played since then actually agree.

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1. Graphics in the first months of Early Access were infinitely better, but since optimization was trash, they massively downgraded it so people could run the game more smoothly (unfortunately optimization is still pretty trash, but now with much worse graphics).
2. Bugs actually got fixed back then. There were some outliers, but actual effort was put into trying to fix stuff. I stopped playing Hunt about 2 years ago (playing regularly). When I come back for a weekend to play with friends, I still see game breaking bugs constantly. Stuff like massive desync when sprinting close to objects like poles or jumping over fences (you get teleported meters away since server-side you got "stuck").
3. Servers have always been trash. On a South American server, your "stable" ping could vary between 30-80. No idea how a same host could deliver such huge differences, but ok, no major issue here. Ping fluctuation, however, was an absolute nightmare. Sudden jumps to 200 ping, followed by the server scrambling to re-sync everything after the spike lead to constant teleportation, difficulty in interacting with objects (picking up lamps, opening doors etc.). And the hit-reg is absolutely terrible. Too many times blood is drawn and no damage is dealt.

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So the main point of your post does hold true to some extent: the game just doesn't seem to get better over time. They add some content here and there, but so many of the main issues we had back then are still issues the game has right now.