Partly, but it's deeper & more nuanced than that. In the old days when magic item churn was the norm they needed magic items in multiple areas & had weaknesses. Those weaknesses were on personal & party level while the magic item needs were for primary niche secondary niche(s) and patching gaping holes.
Lets say Alice had a crazy charge build like the one that led to the creation of the god wizard build While Bob & Dean had less optimized builds. Alice is weak to touch attacks & nobody can fill X & Y niche needs for the group. I as a GM could give Bob &Dean powerful magic items that improve and/or broaden their primary niche as appropriate for their build/power level. Alice herself could be pulled aside for a particular discussion admitting that the power imbalance is a bit over the top & ask what other areas they might want to spec towards that allow bob & dave to catch up a bit... After that discussion with alice I could give her weaker magic items that help with secondary roles enough to make them closer in power level to bob & dave or magic items that help her meet prerequisites for some other niche.
With 5e the default assumption is that players have no feats and no magic items.. straight up the baseline expectation is zero. Feats are really only "optional" in the most technical sense so all of the players are by default above the curve of expectations. As a GM 5e doesn't allow you to give weaker magic items than expected because the expectation is starting gear 1-20 & nobody's going to use a -1 sword for long. Not only that 5e no longer really has meaningful prerequisites on anything so it's no longer possible to do things like give a magic item that adds +7 to underwater-basketweaving for Alice to qualify for that cool PrC either.
