Power creep. I stopped playing in 2004 or so, and the number of expansions since then has been a tad more than 20. And the number of traits and abilities has skyrocketed.

I still play MTG:O and Arena sometimes... Back in the day, I started Playing in the Odyssey block and left the game by the Kamigawa block, nothing personal, just life and time to move on...

Right now it is like what happens when a product has been around for long enough, has reach popularity, and had had to reinvent itself and remain relevant by branching into way to many timelines. Something like what happened to WWE (nee WWF), in the early 90's it was just the one show, and remained stable during the Attitude era, after that they came up with crossovers, branching shows like Smackdown, repurposing wrestlers, increasingly crazier storylines, and more and more artifacts to remain relevant and squeeze as much revenue as it was possible...

MTG is just about the same, they are currently doing what started as parallel blocks with Universes Beyond but that are now merged into the traditional Standard storyline and it makes no sense, abilities are all over the place and they are now being rebranded and sprinkled with some "whatever helps the block" narrative that is just tiresome... Murders at Karlov Manor, for example, introduced some ridiculous mechanics about "suspecting" creatures... I mean, come on!

On the other hand they have caved for politics and at least 20% of the art doesn’t even make sense any more, in a card game... a fantasy card game... things don't make sense any more.

It's tiresome, and it's impossible to grasp the game any more...

2/1 for W was extremely efficient in your day. I miss those days

the definitely reprint cards; or release cards with slight differences in rules text but you'd be surprised how much creativity has come out of rules/play design since that time.

Every set will introduce two or three new mechanics. Some of the cards from that set will be entirely based around those mechanics (for example, Vehicles as artifacts that become creatures when "crewed" by other creatures). Many cards will be staples needed in every set with a new mechanic attached (e.g., "Target creature gets +2/+2 and gains X until end of turn"). Also, sometimes mechanics are tweaks and improvements to old ones that didn't pan out well.

I listen to the lead designer's (Mark Rosewater) Drive to Work podcast. He's worked for MTG as a contractor or employee since the mid 90s. He's mentioned this problem a couple times. His solutions: (1) See MTG as a basic rules system for playing different kinds of games. Makes sense, considering it has multiple win conditions and methods of achieving them. (2) With each set, focus on a theme and dive as deep as you can. There's been a "World's Fair steampunk" set, a titanic Lovecraftian monsters set, a Greek mythology set.