I’m also participating. :) You’re right that the Suggestions tab on Identify is less useful by default for those situations. Nothing has changed recently or is broken from what I can tell.
There’s an existing feature request to make these filters “sticky” where you could vote and/or weigh in with your thoughts: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/allow-users-to-set-persistent-parameters-for-the-compare-tool-in-identify/5257