It is indeed a bit of a downer, isn’t it?
RANT WARNING
However, this is not necessarily the fault of the people, but more likely of the system that funnels people together, like throwing bits and pieces into a single flow and see which of them stick, and which start reacting, and which of those start spontaneously turn into gold (or other prescious substance of choice). You put a forum up for people, you let them ‘recruit’, and this sells the illusion that all is do-able; and while you may arrive at a completed project, having found a team with a necessary skill-set by sheer luck, this is by no means the rule.
So perhaps the template and forum itself should differ somewhat from what it is.
So few recruiters, for example, address the fundaments, like: how money is going to circulate; where exactly on the project timeline will payouts (or other dues, even for an unpaid project) be made; who the frag are you who is trying to assemble a team? What makes you qualified? Why would anyone follow you? How invested are you, yourself, in your vision?
These things are often omitted somehow.
One reason I never posted a recruitment thread is that I don’t believe I will find enough like-minded people to really carry the project through.
This of course has its perks, like zero accountability (trust me, a team hates a leader who abandons a project, with a vengeance), zero pressure (because even though people trust you to make decisions, they also feel free to blame you for them - or praise you, come what may; people are like that), and an indefinite timeline.
The obvious drawback is I only have myself to rely on - be it funds, financial schemes, monetization, recruitment and comissioning, design, programming and whatever else.
Point is, perhaps it is better to look for more than people who just want to make a game; it is prudent also to consider
a)their financial background vis-a-vis your own
b)their skills as applied to the projects you can do
c)their way of thinking and whether or not you can do stuff together for a long while without pressuring each other too much
d)their preferred activity and style of doing things
e)their obvious and subtle motivations (if you can grasp the latter, which is tricky)
Why not make that into a template? Maybe we’ll see more success.
P.S. There is also an alternative solution of making a series of Epic-directed community projects - the kind that most can join and that would pay you someday based on the amount of your contribution.