All I know is that 4 of my ~1.0 k/d brothers/cousins/friends have been winning a lot more games in the past few weeks and asked me if they made the game easier.
I on the other hand have noticed that the game has gotten a bit harder, but not to a point where it's not enjoyable. I can still consistently get top 5 while playing characters I hate for challenges. In fact, I prefer the game with SBMM as the fights are actually fun and more "cerebral", but not campy like late platinum+ ranked is.
On another note: I hate challenge progression for battlepass and miss the old progression system...though it was way too much of a grind, so preferably they'd speed up progression slightly. Or heck, keep daily challenges for XP/battlepass xp boosts and keep the rate almost entirely as it was in Season 1.
Just anything to make the Battle Pass not seem like a list of chores.