> There's also a format where you pay for packs. You open a pack, grab one card, and then pass it on to the player left of you. Repeat. Sealed deck or something it is called, but sealed deck itself involves too much around RNG.
Close. Sealed is when you get 6 packs yourelf, and construct the best deck you can out of the cards therein. You are thinking of limited, in which everyone gets 3 packs, and takes one card, and passes the rest along, until every person has 45 cards they use to construct a deck.
These are both fun, but as you said, it adds additional RNG to the RNG already present in the gameplay. There are strategies that come with that additional RNG, but there are certainly players who simply find it a turn off. More importantly to me is that it requires buying 3/6 packs per person (~$12/$24) every time to play.
Cube formats are becoming a popular alternative. Instead of opening a set of brand new packs to play, players construct their own card pools and simulate a limited or sealed event from it. This eliminates the need to rebuy new (and potentially already owned) cards, and also allows for players to create interesting card pools that aren't available from packs. But it requires significant upfront investment in terms of planning.
Probably the best format these days for those not interested in the steep costs is Pauper. Its traditional Magic in that you construct your own deck from the pool of all existing cards, but it's unique in that only Common rarity cards are legal. This eliminates a lot of the flashier cards out there, but Magic has been around long enough that there is still lots of creative space in terms of designing unique strategies. There can still be expensive cards, as some are quite old, but because they are all common rarity, really expensive decks tend to cost in the tens of dollars rather than the hundreds.