April fools jokes have run rampant online today, with media outlets, developers, and publishers alike creating fake content or telling jokes to varying degrees of success and humor. League of Legends developer Riot Games has joined the fun with a zany game mode that goes against everything the core game stands for--but they're actually making it a playable game type for the next week.
The addition the developers joked about is called Ultra Rapid Fire, a mode meant to accelerate the entire experience. Riot wants to do away with many of the core "anti-fun" features normally present in League of Legends, and this mode is the antithesis of the real game.
"There are a lot of changes here, but the core philosophy is to tune down anti-fun mechanics like mana costs, cooldowns and buying boots. Some of our other updates (like the additional tenacity) were to counterbalance our initial wave of changes, because when you eliminate cooldowns you also increase crowd control... a lot."
Game-balancing and competitive mechanics be damned, Riot says--players want faster gameplay! The mode has increased movement speed by 60 for all champions, doubled attack speed for all ranged champions, increased critical strike by 25% of base damage for ranged champions, and gold pickups are up 500% for all champions. Oh, and all ability costs are down to exactly zero mana.
Riot introduced these changes as the "future" of League of Legends gameplay meant to be a detailed joke, but actually are letting gamers play with these settings in the game for the next week. Below is their video preview for Ultra Rapid Fire Mode--enjoy.