Riot Games addresses why they are removing Mythics in 2024

After announcing the removal of Mythics at the start of next year, Riot Games developers explained the reasons behind such a decision.

Image Credits | Riot Games

Riot Games – Mythics system removed in 2024

According to the dev post, the system worked well for some classes but not for others, especially when it came to satisfying champions within subclasses.

Fighters have many different subclasses (divers, juggernauts, skirmishers, etc.), so trying to fulfill the needs of all those different champions with only four items has proven to be extremely difficult.

Riot explained that while it was possible to solve the issue by adding more Mythics, they were afraid of the increasing complexity of the game had they done so. For every Mythic item that they added an item slot is taken up and there would be one less in the Legendary item pool.

Going into Mythic items, we knew that adding them would mean less itemization options for item slots 2-5. We did increase the total item pool to compensate for this since we knew the Legendary space would be more pinched, but it still wasn’t enough. We initially thought that the excitement Mythics were bringing as a new tier of items would overcome this, but while ~50% of champions were satisfied with their Mythic items, the other ~50% were left feeling like they didn’t have items that felt right for them. To fully satisfy the needs of all champions, we would need to add ~30% more items (and the complexity associated with each) to the item system, which we don’t want to do, as that will make League significantly harder to learn.

The issue with having unique effects on Mythics

Another reason why Riot has been struggling with the Mythic system is related to the unique effects those items get. According to them, they mentioned there is design debt when it comes to designing new champions. For example, ADCs must be designed around getting a dash from Galeforce.

Another issue with Mythic items is that due to the need to satisfy many different users with a limited number of Mythic items, each item tended to be quite complicated as we often needed to have multiple mechanics or stats on certain items so that they’d be satisfying across many different champions and classes (many items like Stridebreaker needed 4 stats). Prior to Mythics, items were much simpler across the board which is something we’d like to get back to.

And too much power on specific items

Throughout the past few years, the devs have realized that some unique item effects in the Legendary item system have been overriding champions’ gameplay too much, thus their intention to reduce it by some amount. Their goal is to let the champions’ unique gameplay shine, as opposed to having items being too powerful.

Item Stacking Considerations

Riot mentioned that having Mythic items was great for game balancing since they didn’t stack with other items. That being said, the trade off was too big since it heavily increased game complexity and failed to deliver for all champions. With that in mind, Riot intends to reduce the power of items that were previously Mythic when converting them to Legendary, rather than bringing up the power of the Legendary ones.

As we move to a world where most items will be stackable again, we will need to reduce the power level of items generally, so that stacking them doesn’t become too powerful.

How will the items be designed in the future

The devs want to create simple items with a clear purpose to reduce the barrier to entry of learning League and reduce the unnecessary complexity in making choices between competing itemization options

Where possible, we would like to reduce item complexity to have one clear unique effect and a maximum of 3 stats. We also want items to have at least ~5 users, but with as diverse of a champion roster as we have in League, we know we will need to make exceptions in some places.

As a result, Riot is expecting to have fewer exciting items across the board, but in return, champions’ kits will shine more, allowing for more flexibility across the board.

While long term we’re still interested in the concept of an additional item tier (Ornn does it well for example), we know Mythic items as they are currently is not the right execution of that concept.