One of League of Legends most popular game modes, Ultra Rapid Fire (URF), is making a brief comeback in celebration of Riot Games’ 10-year anniversary.
Iterations of URF have come and gone. Riot attempted to balance out a game mode that gives champions 80-percent cooldown reduction and takes away mana and energy costs for abilities. But statistics show that players get “burned out” by playing URF, so developers are launching the mode as a “one time thing.”
When does URF end?
Unfortunately for many URF fans, all good things must come to an end. The favored game mode goes live today, but it’ll only be around for approximately 11 days.
URF will be available until Nov. 8, according to Riot’s support page.
Why is URF’s return for a limited-time only?
Despite fans begging for URF to be made a permanent staple on Summoner’s Rift, Riot is relaunching the game mode as an “experiment” and a “one time thing.”
“We’ve been transparent in the past that URF seems to have a lot of detrimental effects on players in the long term—in particular, it makes people burn out and stop playing League all together,” Riot said in the Dev Corner. “If this becomes the case again, even with the changes, we’ll have no choice but to keep URF’s return as a one-time special event.”
Though URF causes a surge in games played when it launches, the amount of players on League actually drops back down to lower than before, according to Riot. The developer experiments with different ways to balance out the game mode, but the amount of longtime players that stop playing the MOBA actually doubles after the URF hysteria dies out.
So to protect the player base and maintain numbers, Riot is reluctant to make URF a permanent game mode.
How will URF be different this time around?
To limit the amount of “burning out” caused by URF, Riot made some changes to the game mode prior to its return.
Players will now be able to ban overpowered champions during champion select. Riot also did a full balance on every single champion in the game for URF and upgraded the hotfix process so the company can quickly intervene if players start abusing a specific champion.
Certain pacing elements used in normal Summoner’s Rift will also be included in URF, such as turret plating, while Elder Dragon is being tuned down to allow some champions to shine in the late game.
