The last time my base was 5 starred? Sorry, my memory doesn't go back that far.
I remember someone 4 starred me and he was lvl 260+ and used a HT army with 7 decoys, card troops and alliance archers and planes naturally. He got 1million rss and over 14k oil. It was a hard win, he lost half his tanks plus some planes but he got a lot. And that's how it should be.
In a game like this, where players are equal with each other, the balance must favour the attacker say, 5:4. It must. Otherwise, what's the incentive to attack?
Cannibals , l can understand someone an age lower than you getting 1 star. Someone equal to you should be able to 3-5 star you but it should be a major loss of troops. Someone above you should be a challenging win for 5 stars.
That's how l see the ratios of attack vs defend. So l can't agree that someone on your level should only get 1 star against you. There's just no incentive to attack if that's the case.
If someone equal to you only gets 1 star then this person won't even bother with someone higher. And we SHOULD be encouraging players to try harder bases. The rewards would be better and they get better by attacking harder opponents.
You've been playing for years and getting better as you go along. That's how it should be. Maybe there are more newbie players as you've been getting better. Maybe players don't bother with defenses because they're concentrating on attack. Who knows?
Bases becoming easier to beat is not the issue. That's clearly a symptom of people neglecting their bases.
You should be measuring yourself against people who aggressively defend. I'm sure there's more than enough of us to test your mettle.