I think I got really, really lucky.
I took a 5-6 month break from the game at one point, and it included the release of ships. I had been playing since about 1 month after game release and would almost certainly have ended up on a brutal shard. Instead a couple months of ships went by without me logging in so I was a "new" ship player at level 75 or 80 (whatever was the level cap then, I forget) and with a much more developed roster than the folks that were just hitting level 60, which is I think where you otherwise gain ships.
So I dropped into my shard with an advantage, and that advantage has never really gone away. I didn't play for top ranks until much later, but I was always hanging around #100 and as soon as they started offering crystals for your Fleet Arena rank, I made my move.
It's true that fleet arena is generally easier than squad arena (for pretty much anyone), but I think that for me it's been extra easy. Still take 1st everyday (though I do lose 1 battle out of every 5-10 in the new Negotiator meta, when I never lost ever using Ackbar/Falcon).
So I have a lot of sympathy for people on tough shards. It really isn't fair that I can collect 400 crystals/day while they're getting zero and I've never even bothered to R7 my JKA (he and GK are both sitting at r5, I think).
Because of this, I do think that a bunch of difficult shards should be split - not mine, but plenty of others.