this wasn't the first time this worked and this doesn't happen if you propper screen yor precious paladin.

Would a larger version of the map with the same theme be helpful here?

PRO_Dregs
I don't know if people will go for it but I'd like to see more wide/long format maps with the start boxes distributed on the long side. Maybe even 3:1 ratio. It seems to me that this approach would make large player counts play more like a smaller teams game, with the opportunity for individual contribution in your lane.

surely there was a vote, and this map won.

I'm sure duck would win most of its votes

The problem with a map that has long-side startboxes like Valiant Saltscape is that an advantage in one part of the long front can very easily snowball into winning the entire game, and it is unlikely that all parts of the front will have evenly matched players. To take the idea to extremes, imagine a set of ten 1v1s in which the first player to win their 1v1 wins the entire match for their team. Not altogether satisfying.

I think it is possible for a map to avoid this problem and also avoid being an awful porcfest. Even something as simple as north-versus-south Comet Catcher is not too bad at fairly large team sizes (although I don't know that it is quite large enough to scale to 16v16). I think that achieving this requires skill and creativity but also restraint from a map maker; I think that a complicated map with lots of fancy terrain is likely to have properties that make large team games pretty static.