It depends but in general I'd disagree. If the small balls of mud have all kinds of implicit dependencies, but you have to find them by searching across codebases (and languages) -- does that sound easier than finding them all in the same codebase and language? Overall, its comparing bad design to bad design. I think the main argument I'd make here is, micro-services doesn't actually solve the big ball of mud problem, it solves a completely different problem.

You can step-through your big ball of mud in a debugger, but you can't do the same with your small balls of mud. Not easily at least. That alone makes a huge difference.

They're both bad. It feels like a reverse Sophie's Choice to have to pick one.

The real friction in the system is always in the boundaries between systems. With microservices it's all boundaries. Instead of a Ball of Mud you have Trees and No Forest. Refactoring is a bloody nightmare. Perf Analysis is a game of finger pointing that you can't defuse.

A thousand small balls of mud that communicate with each other randomly is nearly impossible to grok because the IDE can't save you