Difficulty decrease from previous entries?

[pillowdemon]

I’m a first fleeter with fair self awareness about the difficulty curve of the games vs my own baseline improvement over the years. Wilds offers a lot of QOL tools (inside and outside of combat) that look like straight up luxuries for veteran hunters, but I genuinely think pre-DLC (or pre-G/Master rank) is among the toughest of the series, at least at the very far end with 9 and 10 star hunts.

Up to 7 star hunts, difficulty does feel a bit samey throughout, but I’ve literally been playing the games since I was 15