Mincemeat as a map is so, so sad for me. It's an absolutely horrendous map that's so easy to turn playable while still likely staying in line with whatever design philosophy the developers had with this game. Not perfect but a playable map will always be better than whatever this is.
The biggest problem with Mincemeat is that nobody has any good reason to ever move. Nobody. Shorter-ranged weapons can technically drop right but have little reason to do so. That platform they'd be dropping from is one that area of effect weapons can stuff out very easily and the only reward they'd see from it is potentially killing someone sitting out in the open for some reason. The absolute best case would be reaching and then clinging to the wall that's in front of them to move over left. Going left at the start forces you to go directly into mid if you want to go forward at all which is directly into the line of sight of basically everyone, only with the best case scenario being you going up to the platform by the middle grate bridge where you're still in everyone's line of sight. Incredibly vulnerable path with an end goal that in itself is also incredibly vulnerable.
Going left at the start does at least allow you to paint for your special with relative safety. That much is nice by comparison to the other options. The problem with every single place you could possibly move to as a frontline is that there is little to stop a Charger from sitting on their perch. The most obvious issue with this map is that backlines can just sit in one place and completely lock down any kind of movement without changing their field of view.
There are other maps that feel backline-favored but at least allow you to move and at least allow you to get reasonably close to the backline player. You may not be able to threaten them super hard but throwing a bomb at them or scaring them away with some kind of special at least feels possible. Backlines on this map limit approach options to such a degree that even that isn't possible and they do it by sitting in one spot. You need to use either your own backline to try and gain an edge or one of exceptionally few specials to threaten, even if not outright kill them so you can
try to move up.
Even still, let's let's say you somehow get a wipe from a neutral game state and want to push forward to capitalize on this. The only way to go up further is over a grate bridge onto the enemy's plat, where there's extremely little cover and the enemies can choose to drop on you anywhere they want without any difficulty. Maybe you can get into their spawn but they'd probably respawn too quickly for that. If you kill everyone except for the enemy backline they'll still be a reasonably comfortable distance from you as well considering they just watched you slowly walk up there.
You might think that their dominance here would at least mean backline players would enjoy this map, but to my understanding they really don't. I'm no backline player but I've heard from several of them that the maps they find the least fun to play on are those where they are discouraged from moving around a lot. Makes total sense to me. It would take a lot of fun out of the game if gameplay both becomes as simple as pointing and clicking and you have so much less to focus on or worry about while doing that pointing and clicking.
This much isn't really a point against this map but playing it in solo queue sounds horrible for backline players. Imagine going E-Liter, your favorite weapon, only to consistently be queued with another backline in a map where there are so few relevant places to stand. Backline-favored maps are inherently going to get more flexible players queueing in playing backlines so there will be way more games like this. It's sad to say that the one saving grace could be that maybe double backline doesn't feel horrible on this map but that would be awful if it's true.
So how could this map be fixed? Well the first thing I'll say...
I don't even think Mincemeat needs too much to at least become a serviceable map. You see those yellow lines covering those walls? Just make those paintable. That's all you need to do and I don't hate the map nearly as much.
Picture the situation now for frontlines. Now you have one super strong and another more situational way to try and move through mid. In order to go left, all you really need to do is clear the left platform by the Splat Zone. Backlines on your perch or well-placed bombs can help with this, but might not completely fix since they could still dip back and to your left since that's still a fairly safe spot for them. It'd be quick to go back onto that platform and if you were to rush them while they were still in that area by going up the wall that would be fairly telegraphed and you'd be pretty vulnerable.
If you do manage to clear people out of that area, then you have an easier time actually getting in. Backlines on their perch will need to put some of their focus in looking towards you and if they're looking at you there, the drop from the right that exists in current Mincemeat will be a lot more appealing. The bottom right drop doesn't even need to be
good, but this much should encourage coordinated pushes. If you're going left by yourself then you'd still be tasked with approaching a backline with no cover while your teammates may or may not be ready or paying attention. If you're going left with someone else dropping on the right, then the person dropping on the right won't be able to go super far, but they will be able to poke at any backlines with bombs, AoE, or some special to force them to move and not attack you as you close that distance. Sounds like a much more dynamic and interesting mid. Still a backline-favored map for sure but that's not even a bad thing by itself.
The sad thing is that I don't even think this would completely fix the map! Everything I've just said is to make it
playable. There's still the issue of holding advantage on this map feeling horrible and while I really like the grate bridge up to spawn, the spawn area itself kind of sucks too! There's very little cover and if the opposing team somehow gets control of that then you have very little room to paint for your special. These parts of the map are technically completely fine but are still not amazing by any stretch.
And even if you were to make those two walls paintable, even if it were while fixing those other problems, the map would still feel like a Splatoon 3 map. I would personally find it to be only a solid map at best. You would need a much bigger rework to flip my opinion from it being a horrible stage to a truly great one. Something with Splatoon 3's maps to me is that they mostly feel...same-y, even the good ones. There's very little interesting use of terrain, controlling choke points is way simpler and very similar across all of them, and even on the better maps that give some kind of freedom of movement they all end up feeling sort of like better versions of the game's worse maps.
Obvious point of comparison but let's look at Splatoon 1 maps. There are a lot of duds in there and some even fall into the same chokepoint problem as some of this game's maps. Arowana Mall and Walleye Warehouse in particular feel like Splatoon 3 maps to me. Outside of those, you have some truly incredible maps like Splatoon 1's versions of Mahi-Mahi Resort and Flounder Heights. These maps genuinely felt closer to playgrounds than anything I have experienced in Splatoon 3 save Museum d'Alfonsino in the high jump challenge. Unless you are quite literally getting spawn camped, maps like those feel awesome. You're free to push into or through mid in so many more unique ways and it no longer feels like everyone has to cram to the same one or two spots at any given point.
Something else that's worth noting is that I don't think there are nearly enough unique uses of terrain in this game. In Splatoon 1 you had things like Hammerhead with this giant overarching bridge over the whole thing with plenty of stage below that was perfectly fine to play on. There were plenty of similar, smaller examples that I can't remember off the top of my head, but that alongside the added freedom of movement both helped elevate each stage to feeling like its own separate thing. The biggest comparisons I can think of in this game are Flounder Heights's mid in its entirety, Robo ROM-en's kinda useless underpass flank routes, and while this one's much smaller, funny enough, Mincemeat's grate bridge against that wall into spawn.
Back to the main point, Mincemeat's only example of something like this has incredibly little impact on the state of the map. You would need a bigger overhaul for this map to not just feel comparable version of other maps in this game regardless of its improvements. There are so many ways that you could approach this. A sillier example could be to let people walk up onto the outermost walls of the map like that one glitch used to allow, maybe extending how far you can go but still not allowing people to walk directly from one spawn to the other. You wouldn't be able to paint underneath yourself or refill your ink while up there, most weapons wouldn't be able to threaten other people super easily, and you would make yourself an even more vulnerable target to specials with high or infinite range. The tradeoff is an absolutely huge flank if the other team either doesn't know or isn't ready for you to be up there. Likewise, an E-Liter up there would also be able to control less space since so much of their range would be used aiming downwards. What other map in this game has something like that?
If you want to take the approach of introducing a more explicit gimmick then something interesting that I saw on X (formerly Twitter) was modding in a crane holding a platform like what Saltspray had. It went from your backline's perch, to the right platform in mid, to their backline's perch, to the left platform in mid, rinse and repeat. Imagine if that platform was paintable and both teams had to worry about sharking opponents up there! Imagine if someone could put a Splash Wall on it to more easily ride it across and directly onto the enemy's snipe! Sounds cool, right? You'd still be incredibly vulnerable to bombs or in the case of putting a Big Bubbler up there, other specials. Idea still stands though as something to introduce more unique dynamics to a map that otherwise struggles from being uninteresting.
And either of those two bigger fixes would need to be in addition to making the map better in the other ways I mentioned. Give mid those added paintable walls, make there more cover on both sides' snipes, and make there more space that the enemies can't reach in the spawn area. That all would be my idea to make Mincemeat into a truly good stage. Whether or not you think that's overkill is up for debate though. You could draw the line at it being okay if Mincemeat is just serviceable like I said before, you could draw the line at it being good for "a Splatoon 3 map" as I described earlier, or you could think that neither of those are enough and add one of the two final, larger changes I mentioned.
This ended up getting super rambly LOL my bad
