Skill ceiling has just got lower over time to try and make it more fun for everyone. I remember back when I last played you could get away with 1+ hour long snub brawls easily because people were just so difficult to kill, but that just doesn't happen very often anymore.
Roll back the mod 10 years and these players will body people even harder than they do now, when I came back I was pretty trash again but with things like missiles and now CL1 weapons I was able to contribute much easier until I started being able to switch over to different loadouts more and more.
If you can barely kill anyone now, rolling back the mod 10 years isn't magically going to change this.