There is a huge gulf between both side of the player base, and not many ways to progress. Outside of getting lucky with event souls, Frontier Coins are one of the best ways for a player to catch-up. Especially with the ever increasing stable of FC-only characters and dungeon keys. But FC mostly come from high-end content, which makes even that route difficult. Then the Frozen Wasteland launched. An easier dungeon, with valuable drops. Cosmic evo runes, half of the 3* evolution shards, frontier coins, rare souls, and even skill shards were suddenly accessible for players taking their first steps away from the story content, and into limited-event content.
The addition of a Madness stage was a surprise, and it could have been a welcome one if it had built upon Hard modes strengths, rather than cannibalising the drop rates and ruining the dungeons appeal. Frozen was special as it was one of the only ways for intermediate players to try bridge the gap between beginner and end-game. If those changes are intentional, it's made things much harder for me again, just as I was beginning to feel I was making progress. Be more like Tiny Tim, and less like Scrooge Eddie