Is game harder if you're in a team

I created a team to see if it would give freebies every week like Royal Match used to. It didn't but I forgot to delete it. All of a sudden i find 46 people have joined and about a dozen are playing. They're all new players around 700 and under. I'm at 2700. We exchange cards lives etc. The dozen active are pretty active.

All of a sudden the game has gotten nearly impossible. Like i know how it works where you spend an entire 30 min or an evening trying to pas a level. It feels like that every level now. No breaks. Several occasions full pot and SEB and not even close. Meanwhile my team mates are cleaning up dozens of levels in day ...

Am I royally imagining that it's gotten difficult to force me to spend to keep up?