I'd intend for v0.2 (which I've just now released) to be easier, but upon going back and replaying v0.1.2 I think all the ability cost increases I made roughly offset the difficult reduction due to other changes. I will say, though, that I've greatly increased the variety of viable builds so the game no longer requires going for a small handful of actually good abilities to do well. So possibly the game will feel easier to people who haven't sunk a bunch of time into figuring out what the optimal strategy is.
In any case, I think the actual solution to difficulty is to provide difficulty options since I apparently have no idea how to tune game difficulty for players who are not me.