When assessing this suggestion on paper, it seems like a good idea - it's Google Earth for MeepCraft, where we can see the various settlements of players almost like we would see cities on a real map. However, it is stressful on the servers; as Meep has such a small development team, it is not feasible to support even a 2D map on the servers. Despite that, however, there are gameplay-related issues in this suggestion.
Players wish to keep plots private and have them look good. What's wrong with building great temples, palaces, homes, or anything, outside? An underground city is already a theme, and it is completely impractical to attempt to build a riverside settlement underground. Most players who wish to make their town private simply do not want people nearby, there is no problem with that. The last time I gave out coordinates to my town, I was forced to remove the settlement I had created there, as someone had walked over a thousand blocks simply to reach it; I genuinely had assumed they were joking.
You are oversimplifying the raiding aspect a lot; you do realize that as /random only allows you to check your vicinity for towns to raid, a map literally allows you to scan the entire surface of the world and premeditate raids? Any town is a drastically easier target, should a map be implemented.
Players can also keep plots private before the restart. But that didn't make them invisible to the server. /random could take you there or the person themselves could take you there. Regardless of the fact, if players want to make 'great temples, palaces, homes, or anything outside' what makes you think they'd be invisible to the average player? Anybody could spot such a creation from afar. Also the Town Worlds isn't a huge place, it wouldn't take long before something that is supposed to be private to become public. Players are only limited to their abilities when it comes to their creations, that is their private affair and not anyone else's.
You are also oversimplifying the raiding aspect. /random doesn't currently have a cool down. You can /random hundreds of times before reaching an abandoned town or something that is supposed to be 'private'. Dynmap is no exception. Also with the introduction to a new server dynamic regarding towns, hopefully towns will be more rare and become harder to maintain and take ahold of.
Also I would use /town list to /t (town name) to check if that town was about to fall and set a home there. The only difference with dynmap is that this will be easier for the player. It's always been a first come first serve basis. The only winners are those who are putting in the extra work to receive the reward.
I also do understand that a dynmap could use a lot of storage and or server space. But I'm not saying that this suggestion needs to be implement right away as I've already stated numerous times in this thread. I'm simply saying further down the line, such a suggestion would be a great benefit to the community with such little things like allowing players to choose when they want to show up and off the map.
-quote from previous post: You still haven't answered my question: what benefit does a dynmap provide other than "it looks cool and might be nice?"
Like, I get what dynmap does, but how/why does that make Meep better?
~ @metr0n0me
I'm not trying to be rude, but seriously? It's explained already. It allows players to understand their surroundings within the server. This allows players to make plans for where to expand their towns. This also allows other players to understand how a town looks, and navigate such said town. Their whereabouts as to where they are on the towny server, and where other towns are near them. This would in some retrospect allow staff to know where players are on the map to catch players who are duping, or abusing glitches.
Such a program could be used in a later state for mini-games, as well aid staff in modreq's and investigations into players for legitimate reasons.
