The thing about Standard (the Magic: the Gathering format) is that people historically have played Standard because it was 1. cheap 2. widely supported in organized tournament play.

Neither of those things are true any more thus rendering Standard 'bad' in the eyes of most players, but people have mythologized this idea that Standard was at one point 'good' (as opposed to cheap and rewarding to play).

This has, for large segments of the playerbase, meant hallucinating sometimes wildly contradictory fantasies about past Standards. This rosy Standard of yesteryear was simultaneously synergy-based and modular, high- and low-powered, aggro- and control-driven, it had good bad mana fixing, etc. Many players agree that Standard used to be good, but if you pick it apart, those players don't agree on what 'good' is, sometimes even when they think Standard was good at the same time.

Mostly people just liked playing Magic, and they used to have good incentives to play Magic (cheap cards and great tournament support). Standard's quality is an infrastructural and business issue, not really a design issue.

If that's the case, then maybe making it so at least 50% of the most powerful cards in Standard are some of the most widely reprinted cards ever to exist (Llanowar Elves, Day of Judgement, presumably other similar things) then that at least would seem to address the cost part of the equation.