Riot Games has announced that the temporary One for All mode (or OFA, if you will), will be going offline at the end of Sunday, the 8th of June. Starting with the 9th, the mode will no longer be available, and, like it or not, it’s going back to the Riot cooking lab, where it’s going to gather dust until it’s pulled out from retirement once more. This is the second time Riot Games has brought OFA to League of Legends. The first time, the map was hosted on Summoner’s Rift, and the mode consisted of teams of 5 of the same champion facing an enemy team with 5 mirrored, but different champions. In other words, 5 Garens were hunting down 5 Teemos.
This time around, the One for All mode took place on the ARAM map known as the Howling Abyss, and all 10 players controlled the same champion. This eliminated unbalanced teams previously encountered in OFA, but for some, made the game slightly more dull. Well, like it or not, after two weeks of heavy slaughter on the Howling Abyss, we bid farewell to the OFA mode once again. Surprisingly, the community doesn’t seem to mind too much. Browsing on either the NA or European forums, you’ll find very few people crying over the OFA mode. However, fans of League of Legends have used this opportunity to once again ask Riot to return Ultra Rapid Fire (or URF) to the live servers.
To refresh your memory, Ultra Rapid Fire changed the core gameplay of League of Legends by removing skill mana costs, and significantly reducing their cooldowns. This allowed for a “spammy”, but extremely engaging and fun game mode that was immensely popular. Unfortunately, despite its availability being prolonged by a week or so, the mode was eventually taken down. Several petitions have emerged online, asking Riot Games to bring back URF, but with little success so far.
Riot Games are currently focusing heavily on the League of Legends graphical update, an update that’s going to completely change how the main Summoner’s Rift map looks and feels. It’s unlikely URF will be returning any time soon, but we can be certain Riot is cooking up some new game modes and will be treating us to more diverse and fun gameplay elements soon enough. How did you like OFA? Do you want Riot to keep it long-term, or would you prefer it brought back URF? Let us know in the comment section below!