The updated King’s Canyons viability remains in question despite the Season 8 update. King’s Canyon is now no longer a part of the ALGS Map Pool for the considerable future.
There is some sad news for the competitive ALGS fans of Apex Legends. Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts employee, Zac Conely has announced the ALGS is removing the King’s Canyon from the competitive map pool.
Respawn Entertainment and EA Esports have decided that King’s Canyon is no longer a focus of the ALGS competitive scene. Zac is part of the Competitive Gaming branch at EA and Respawn and works alongside the ALGS Partnerships. In a recent tweet, he states that the ALGS player’s discussion means King’s Canyon is not as competitively viable as they hoped.
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Season 8 Mayhem released a reworked version of Apex Legend’s first-ever map, King’s Canyon. The patch updated the North West of the map. There is a new crashed ship; constructible towers, updated loot spawns, blast door and rotations. However, King’s Canyon is still not as competitive as World’s Edge.
Apex Pro Hub polled a response regarding the map just before the announcement. At the time of writing, nearly 75% of the voters disapproved of King’s Canyon returning to the ALGS map pool.
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The other argument from professional players is the map might be okay for competitive play, but there is not enough feedback, and it is too late into the season for a map change. A major shakeup like this could be damaging to teams who have worked hard all year on competing, a major shakeup with maps and a meta change could spell disaster to a year-long event.
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What seems to be holding the map back is the concern over poor late-game circle progression. King’s Canyon has plenty of mountains, out-of-bound zones, and other geographical features that make late-game circles problematic. While one of the weaker parts of the maps has a facelift, the poor rotations, dead-end zones and choke points are still littered around the map. The map still doesn’t feel anywhere near as good as World’s Edge does for competitive play.
With that said, King’s Canyon will remain out of the map pool until after the ALGS Championship. The ALGS Championship is the event that takes place right after the Winter Circuit, inviting the best teams from the event, the ALGS circuit point leaders and last chance online events. The Winter Circuit does not end until March 28th, with the Championship sometime after that. It is safe to say King’s Canyon could be shelved for the first half of the year.
