Mana Acquired / Cards Allowed to be cast, limit per turn.

Tyding

There are certain cards that appear in matches which often end the match once cast(More so in combination with others).  Worse when they fire off on turn 1, which you'd think would be much more rare then reality would have it; Rishkar's Expertise, omniscience, startled Awake to name a few / Some Hand redraw card / and finally a powerhouse monster or the like to finish the deed.

Instead of trying to balance these cards, it occurred to me that if you set a
Mana acquired per turn
or
A limit to amount of cards played a turn

That many of these ridiculous combos get tamed. 

It would allow a match to actually happen where its not just one sided cascading to victory.  Luck and RNG plays a role, but setting a limit on the amount of chaos that occurs in 1 turn reins in the chance of things getting out of hand.

Would also address the looping ordeal.

Mburn7

Technically the LPS system is supposed to cut down on that, although it (for the most part) doesn't.

Limiting the number of cards that can be cast per turn was a proposed alternative to the LPS that had some support, although it didn't end up getting implemented.

The issue with either solution is that they won't actually help most of the matches you are talking about, since the max number of cards per turn would need to be set fairly high, and a single Omni + Deploy on turn 1 will end most games without any other cards being cast anyway.

The mana idea I find interesting, but since cards like Omni and HUF don't actually give mana (they reduce the cost) they would be immune to that system and still be problematic anyway.

It seems Oktagon has balanced this issue out by just forbidding the AI from playing any cards sometimes, but so far we haven't been able to find any consistency behind it to be sure.

Tyding

So, yes, neither of those 2 purposed solutions address that 1 card(and perhaps a select few others).  Yet its just a few of several that cause games to cascade out of control.  If either of these changes could prevent that scenario I find that worth while.

  I also believe if either was implemented, that it could start out generous at first, and gradually be tweaked to find a nice limit that doesn't feel too constraining but also allows a game to be had rather then a 1 sided beat down.

"Limiting the number of cards that can be cast per turn was a proposed alternative to the LPS that had some support, although it didn't end up getting implemented."

What were the main opponents of it?  Those who disliked it were in favor of what other solutions?

I would wager a guess that those who have access to those types of cards which allow them to fight fire v fire don't much mind the current state, as they probably get the upper hand on their opponent before its done to them.

Mburn7

Tyding said:

"Limiting the number of cards that can be cast per turn was a proposed alternative to the LPS that had some support, although it didn't end up getting implemented."

What were the main opponents of it?  Those who disliked it were in favor of what other solutions?

I would wager a guess that those who have access to those types of cards which allow them to fight fire v fire don't much mind the current state, as they probably get the upper hand on their opponent before its done to them.

The LPS as it was originally introduced (the current system without the choice, basically) it was pretty much universally panned here.  No player input went into the decision to make the system a timer that would punish slower phones and bad animation programming (buff streamers and token generation, for example).

There had been numerous suggestions over the years for a system to make loop decks more manageable to face off against, the one that seemed to gain the most traction in the months before and after the LPS was introduced was to count the number of cards cast per turn and cut off turns based on that (note "gain the most traction" in this case means about 10 people supported it, not exactly huge numbers either way).

Most players seem to fall under the "I don't really care" or the "let my combos go on forever" camps.  The compromise to that was the current system where you have the option to stop the loops or not, but since the AI can also choose to not stop it doesn't really help much with the issue here.

Honestly I'm not sure if there is a perfect solution, or even a relatively good one.  There are plenty of cards that can invalidate the average HUF or Omni combo deck, but nothing can really save you if they go off on turn 1 or 2.  The only ways I can think of that will help with a turn 1 combo will invalidate a whole lot of good cards, and anything else won't solve the problem of losing on turn 1.