League of Legends Ultra Rapid Fire falls short of expectations after its long-awaited return, resulting in players’ criticism and disappointment.
League of Legends offers its loyal players much more than its classic Summoner’s Rift and ranked games. Aside from the single-lane ARAM and the auto chess battler, Teamfight Tactics, LoL recently reintroduced a fan-favorite seasonal game mode in the 14.3 patch.
Once introduced as an April Fools’ Joke, Ultra Rapid Fire is a “no mana cost, low cooldown” spin on the MOBA game’s classic map. Its action-packed and adrenaline-boosting gameplay attracted many loyal fans, even if the mode is out of rotation.
That’s why many League of Legends players rejoiced Riot Games reintroduced URF in the latest patch. However, it seems like the then-beloved game mode fell short of expectations and received much critique from the player base.
League of Legends players call URF respawn time “delusionally stupid”
In the same Reddit post criticizing URF’s “less fun” comeback, many players pointed their fingers at the long respawn wait as the culprit. One comment brands the death time “delusionally stupid” and drains the fun out of the game.
Respawn times in URF scale much like other League of Legends game modes. However, as most of URF’s aspects rely on ramping up the gameplay speed, it seems to make less sense to keep the respawn times relatively the same as the classic Summoner’s Rift games have.
Moreover, LoL players are more eager for an ARURF Champion pick setting than the current blind pick. ARURF (All Random Ultra Rapid Fire) keeps the exact mechanics of the action-packed game, albeit incorporating the Champion pick mode similar to ARAM games.
Some players also suggest that integrating some of ARAM’s mechanics can significantly increase the balance of Champion skills in the game. One of the highly-favored improvements is for players to spawn at Level 3, granting them all three skills at the start of the game.
Despite the disappointment and calls for mechanic changes, it appears that URF’s return to League is still successful. According to the Riot Games-approved LoL statistics website, there were 29 million URF games played worldwide in the two-week run of patch 14.3 alone.
URF is still available on League of Legends as of the latest 14.4 update and is expected to run until March. For those still eager to try their hands on the high-action game mode, take a peek at our LoL URF Best Champions tier list!