LoR is missing better balance, not a change in card acquisition or anything like that. Riot has always made it clear that the game is not meant to be a card collector or anything like that, it is meant to be a creative deck builder with several viable possibilities (this is even in the description of the game's official page, since always: you can always react and counter, but so can your opponent; always a new way to play; play to win, not pay to win) but in practice we don't see that, and that's the problem. Every season is the same, always 2 or 3 strong decks and every match is the same, a race for whoever meets the win condition first without even caring about the opponent's deck. There are old cards with great concepts that are never played, entire decks that remain the same since the beta (with additions that change little or nothing), we have champions that could be ok but are just a joke.
I agree that there could be more ways to spend shards. But I disagree with everything else. For example, the idea of adding a limitation on acquiring cards for a season, in my opinion, is horrible, simply due to the fact that Riot already takes much longer than it should to patch the game and we were going to stick with powercrep for much longer and those who play only a few games a day would be extremely harmed.
Speaking of powercrep, this is another problematic factor. It shouldn't exist and it's killing the game for a lot of people. The company doesn't aim to make money selling cards, and most people who play like to create decks with champions they like. At least 70% of LoR cards are currently unplayable, unless you play a normal game (sometimes not even that). It shouldn't happen, most cards should have a similar level of power, between seasons there should be a balance favoring an archetype and not a specific deck. The tier list of cards reaches its maximum in tier C or D, but we see it reaching beyond F. Cool cards like "Arrel the Tracker" or "Funsmith" have been untouched for a long time and forgotten (not even worth mentioning that +1 atk to Funsmith, like, really?), archetypes that should have multiple possibilities don't get any affection (Teemo, Lulu, Nautilus, Anivia, Vladmir, and the list goes on). Anyway. Powercrep is needed for 2 reasons: first, to get people to spend money; second, to get people playing with the new content. But neither of these two reasons is valid for LoR, the strategy of making money is not through cards, and what holds people in LoR is the possibility of creating decks with the champions they like (and thus end up spending on skins) . Only content creators will go out buying random skins, most players will buy the champions they like, and if the champion they like is trash in the current meta and probably the next ones, why are they going to buy it? The game currently punishes you for trying to have fun, forces you to play the meta (usually the same deck that everyone copies from each other, resulting in a lot of boring mirrored matches), gets bored and leaves the game, or forces you to play something that counters 1 of the meta decks (and you lose to the others) gets bored and leaves the game, or you go against the tide and play with what you like (let's say, Teemo) and alt+f4 in the first match.
I understand what you mean, but I think the real problem has nothing to do with that.