Mythic Items:
Changing How You Play
Elder Scrolls Online’s Greymoor DLC introduced a new activity: Antiquity. Players can hunt around the world for archeological digs to unearth fantastic prizes. Initially, the prizes were cosmetic, but through discussion, leadership wanted to include combat rewards as well. I proposed a new type of Item, one that granted new effects to the player that reshaped their playstyle. These were Mythic Items.
What are Mythic Items
And why are they unique?
As part of the treasure hunting mini-game, Antiquities, created for the Greymoor DLC, I designed a new type of combat reward: Mythic Items. These pieces of armor drastically changed how you played your game. A Mythic might grant you a super defensive boss when perfectly timing your blocks, much like the ‘parry’ system in fighting games. Another might shroud you in an aura of chaos, granting you random buffs and your enemies random debuffs as the fight progresses. One Mythic rewards building a kill streak, but punishes you for taking damage. Mythics changed the way players considered building their characters and how they played the game.
Mythics are so game changing that only one could be equipped at a time, a decision I made early on in development to prevent situations where two Mythics worn together would create unfavorable outcomes.
Balancing
Mythics aren’t Best In Slot, and that’s on purpose!
ESO prides itself on the idea of “playing the way you want”. It means players have the freedom to pursue different builds regardless if they’re brand new or a veteran. That means that new combat features are balanced to be powerful, but not powerful in a way that makes them mandatory.
I developed a mathematical guideline to determine how strong Items are. Since a Mythic Item would replace exactly one Item Slot, it had to be as powerful as the most powerful single Item Slot. This meant that if a player opts out of using Mythics, they’ll still be as powerful as a player using them
Mythics require sacrifice from players by making them play in ways that would otherwise be suboptimal or risky. I ran playtests to see how difficult certain actions are to perform in intense combat scenarios, such as perfectly timing your defenses or dodging every attack that targets you. The data from these tests became modifiers used to adjust the power of these items accordingly.
In short: The harder a Mythic was to use, the stronger we’d make it.
Legacy
The Chase of Every DLC
Since I created Mythics, at least one new Mythic Item has been introduced since launch. Of the 36 Mythic Items currently in game, I pitched, prototyped, and balanced 32 of them. Mythics are a part of ESO’s storytelling, tie in new stories, and act as a reminder of Tamriel’s past.
Mythics filled a new niche where we could make abilities that were deemed too powerful and strange because we were afraid of power creep and scaling. For veteran players, Mythics have become a part of the endgame, discovering their secret uses and making entire characters that encapsulate a single Mythic Item.
