Apex Legends Season 7 began earlier this month, introducing a new legend, the Trident hovercar, and of course, the brand new map – Olympus. The competitive Apex Legend’s scene was quick to set up a few tournaments on the new map, and it’s pretty clear Olympus isn’t suited to professional play.
I watched several streams yesterday of the weekly tournament that brings together both European and North American teams to compete for weekly prizes. It’s not a part of the official LCS tournaments so can be organized on Olympus.
There was a general consensus across the board – Olympus is a nightmare for competitive play. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Olympus is designed for the casual player base, who make up a huge, huge majority of Apex Legends players.
First, you have to look past the bugs. Audio has already been noted as almost totally ruined in certain areas of the map, or during certain scenarios. The waterfall above Hammond Labs is like a sound sponge, Turbine is impossible to fight inside, and the Horizon ultimate audio bug is frustrating.
In terms of the actual map, Olympus has 16 POI. Each POI is absolutely stacked with loot, probably the most loot ever seen on an Apex Legends map. This sounds great, right?
For a casual game, yes, but for competitive play 16 POI mean that in a 20 team game one or two teams are always contesting off drop. When you’re playing for potentially thousands of dollars, you don’t want to die to an RNG fest as two teams compete for limited loot.
Another issue is the wide open spaces of Olympus, which when you start looking at you start to realize just how much space there is with very little cover. This makes rotations a nightmare, a key part of competitive play.
On top of the multiple choke points that cut through the map, and the prevalence of third parties (which you can experience for yourself in ranked), Olympus isn’t suited to competitive play.
Thankfully, all LCS tournaments are restricted to World’s Edge until next year’s season. Respawn may make changes to the map by that time which make Olympus more viable.
