League of Legends goes through a shake-up every year, with new major gameplay mechanics shaking the boat of how players expect to play the game. One of these major gameplay refinements in League of Legends was the introduction of a new item system known as “mythic items,” which were super-powerful items that provided bonus stats and a strong passive. Mythics have been in the game for a while now, but Riot Games revealed plans to remove these items as they weren’t having the intended effect. In fact, some players have argued they have made the game worse.
Riot Games released a developer blog further diving into the reason why they are removing mythic items from the game. They stated that the mythic item system has benefited some classes, such as assassins which are relatively one-note, but classes with different “subclasses” (such as juggernauts, skirmishers, tanks) have been left behind. As stated by Riot Games, “[fulfilling] the needs of all those different champions with only four items has proven to be extremely difficult.”
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Goodbye, mythic items
Image by Riot Games
According to the dev post, while Riot Games could add more mythic items to better serve the needs of these other subclasses, they would need to add too many items. In turn, this would lead to a high level of complexity. Additionally, many of these mythic items in League of Legends required balance changes to champions to compensate. For example, the article cites balancing Aphelios around the extra mobility provided by Galeforce. Overall, the developers expressed a desire to go back to when items were “much simpler across the board.”
In the future, Riot Games will push to reduce item complexity, where items have “one clear unique effect and a maximum of 3 stats.” Intriguingly, Riot Games will also push for each item to have at least five users. Hopefully, these changes are healthy long-term for the game.
