The reason I’m being a little draconian about thisis because the premise of this thread is whether or not Netrunner has jumped the shark. When we’re dealing with the question of “is Netrunner now too far gone from how Netrunner used to be for new players to jump in,” we’re talking about two types of costs: overhead complexity and comprehension complexity. Netrunner already requires a high amount of comprehension complexity because the rules are crunchy but only vaguely documented, but cards only create extra amounts of comprehension complexity when they involve entirely new concepts or concepts that are detached from the card itself (through a keyword, for instance). A card demands extra overhead complexity when they involve new rules that weren’t In the core rule book or further developed in the FAQ. Again, Netrunner already has pretty high overhead complexity because the templating is sloppy and essentially requires that the FAQ grow with every new release in order to keep players understanding.
So when evaluating “has Netrunner jumped the shark”, then I think “new mechanic” must involve a sognificant amount of both overhead and comprehension complexity above and beyond the already constant cost Netrunner imposes, and only the things I mentioned before have really done this. In many other contexts, I would agree on a broader definition of “new mechanic”.