Being able to sacrifice artifacts and creatures interchangeably opens up a lot more ways to pay for sacrifice costs, especially if you have a consistent artifact token generator like Descent into Avernus
Some still fulfill intricately detailed orders given decades, if not centuries, before
No one wants to acknowledge this
Sure, you have to give up four damage to get Refraction Elemental, but it should more than make up for this in just one turn on the battlefield, which should make defeating the battle worthwhile pretty often
It was anything but
The only decks that existed for some time were ramp decks featuring Field of the Dead, and 22 Small Probe, Big Problem (Gitaxian Probe) Sometimes, it only takes a small and unlikely spell like Gitaxian Probe to cause some serious damage