One thing I don’t like about some Splatoon maps, especially many of the ones in the later entries, is how a lot of the maps seem disconnected from the environment they take place in.
As a comparison, I’ll compare Arowana Mall to Barnacle and Dime. Arowana Mall is nestled tightly among a group of shops, and has some side paths that go around some of the shops, so you can imagine that Inklings walk through the turf war area when there’s no turf war happening to shop (even if the terrain is absolutely ridiculous and impossible to traverse without inking the ground first, but that can be kinda chalked up to videogame level design surrealism or whatever.) On the other hand, Barnacle and Dime’s battle area is in the middle of a body of water in the mall, far away from all of the shops. There is no way any mall customers ever come to that island except to do battles. You could imagine the battle platform being placed unchanged in a wide variety of places and it wouldn’t really matter, so the mall background has no affect on the design of the battle map.
As a comparison, I’ll compare Arowana Mall to Barnacle and Dime. Arowana Mall is nestled tightly among a group of shops, and has some side paths that go around some of the shops, so you can imagine that Inklings walk through the turf war area when there’s no turf war happening to shop (even if the terrain is absolutely ridiculous and impossible to traverse without inking the ground first, but that can be kinda chalked up to videogame level design surrealism or whatever.) On the other hand, Barnacle and Dime’s battle area is in the middle of a body of water in the mall, far away from all of the shops. There is no way any mall customers ever come to that island except to do battles. You could imagine the battle platform being placed unchanged in a wide variety of places and it wouldn’t really matter, so the mall background has no affect on the design of the battle map.