I wouldn't say that's a fair assessment of the earlier seasons. Seasons 1 and 2 were establishing seasons. We get the formation of the teams, the structure of all the rivalries and friendships, plus moments that make us love these characters (Jaune in a dress as an example), which leads to the dark moments of season 3 mattering to the audience more. It made the deaths feel earned and like actual losses as opposed to just being death for the sake of edginess.
You get to see how the schools work, what hunter and huntress society is like, as well as the overall political/racial climate of the world. You get to see the teams out their training in use and go out on an actual mission that ends up being far more than they bargained for, but had to deal with anyways. That gives us insight into the villains' plans to attack Beacon. This is a lot of meat to chew through.
Then season 4 comes along and it's fine, but what did we really get? Some backstory, Ruby's new team doing a lot of walking in the woods, Yang gets a robot arm, Weiss still hates her family, Blake still has to worry about doing something about the white fang. Not a lot pushed the status quo in last season. I still enjoyed the season immensely, I liked that it was quieter and gave all of the characters time for reflection after the absolute wallop that was the ending of season 3. It still didn't really have much going on though. The plot was pretty slim all around.
I'm more than okay with that since we get season 5 so much sooner than we normally would have. It hasn't been a full year has it? Either way, still seems closer to the end of the last season than normal. I'm excited to see what comes next, but season 4 definitely didn't have more happening in it than the first 3 seasons combined.