Apex Legends’ ranked season will feature Kings Canyon and Storm Point when its 14th season begins on Aug. 9, according to a report from The Loadout. The Solace arena will be the first in line, with the game’s newest map taking point halfway throughout the season. It’s unclear which maps will make up the casual playlist.
Kings Canyon being first in line may not come as a surprise to some fans considering the volume of the changes it received. Recently updated maps have hosted the first split consecutively since season 10, which kicked off with an overhauled World’s Edge. Storm Point will take its place during the midseason split, which should begin around mid to late September.
Both maps were part of ranked splits recently, but it’s the first time the two have shared a ranked split. Kings Canyon’s last appearance was in season 12 alongside the recently sabotaged Olympus. Season 12, however, also marked the first time Storm Point sat out of the ranked modes.
Kings Canyon usually draws its share of criticism, but the season 14 map update brings a package of changes designed to improve the map’s overall health and mitigate its major pain points. One of the goals was making up for the landmass removed in season five, when Loba blew up Skull Town and the Thunderdome, and Respawn Entertainment brought about its spiritual successor: a new POI called Relic.
“With Relic, we saw an opportunity to bring back gameplay that many players loved from the original Kings Canyon,” senior level designer Michael Shannon said in an official blog post. “But with a POI more appropriately sized for the overall health of the map.”
Though the team could have put Relic anywhere, having it close to Skull Town’s original location also aims to tone down a pain point when it came to rotations. “With the missing landmass, moving between Caustic Treatment and Market and Octane’s Gauntlet really funneled you into this sort of single lane,” lead designer Jeff Shaw said at a press conference last week. Bringing more traversable area would help offset that deficiency.
The map update also touched on a few other troublesome areas. The Cage is now far more open, and the small settlement on a hill around the middle of the map—the unmarked POI called Hillside—also has less cover to go around. Add to that a few new rotation options and a loot refresh that touched on loot quality, quantity, and disparity, and players may be looking at a completely different Kings Canyon in their ranked matches.
After the first split, Storm Point will make its third appearance in the competitive pool in the four seasons it has been available. Players can expect the latest version of the map, after the addition of the IMC Armories and the new Downed Beast POI, to make a splash.
