State of standard

sarimace

I might be repeating myself here but I still feel like this should be addressed.
Currently, there are multiple 2-card deterministic win-the-game combos in standard. I personally know of four, there might be more I have not seen/figured out yet, or am simply forgetting (counting combos with the same interaction as one combo). Multiple have both parts in PMA sets - they will never rotate. Multiple win the game right away, without giving the opponent any chance to interact at all. Most of the combo pieces are individually powerful cards you would be happy to play on their own.
The reasons standard events are not flooded with those are (in my opinion) the following:
a) the cards necessary are hard to obtain
b) people don't know about them (most enfranchised players will know how to combo with STA or Ocelot, how many of you know the fourth combo I am talking about here?)
c) people don't want to play them (they don't find them fun, they think those combos are bad for the game and don't want to contribute to the problem, they don't think the combo is actually better than just slamming Rakdos...)
If you look at the reasons, it is in my opinion pretty obvious that the problem will just get worse over time.
This needs to be addressed.

But the problem is not just the combos: its the supporting cards as well. Rakdos, Aclazots or Field of ruin can slam the game shut on turn one. Tempt digs for your combo pieces and gives you a ton of mana. Same for Mystical Teachings. Requisition raid can destroy literally everything your opponent tried to do to stop your combo or race you. Animatou can just go to A3 and dump entire games worth of stuff on the board for free with no possibility of interacting with it. Grist can pull stuff from the yard so efficiently, that basically the only way to stop it is Valgavoth passive (which is a huge issue on its own as well); and many more cards and effects do similar things.

The combos are a problem. But the power level of the top X% of the card/planeswalker pool is as well. The game is not fun when the outcome is decided by a single card.
This needs to be addressed.

(This post is really negative. I want to also take this opportunity to also shout out the good things: I love the revitalization of the story mode. I love a lot of the new events. I love that we went to old Lorwyn. I love the foils. I absolutely love a lot of the newer MasterPiece designs. There is a lot of stuff that is really great about this game. I want to play with all the cards, not just the 10 most powerful ones.)