Feone wrote:Regardless of the ingame mechanic, it's simply not going to work in the current game state.
If there is ANY drawback at all to ingame mapping (eg, losing the tiles when killed or KOed) it will just not be used by smart players other than perhaps small local maps for decoration, if this is an option. Hanging them on the wall would look cool I guess.
Saving the minimap will always be possible as long as there are custom clients. Even without these it'll be enormously difficult to prevent players from making a tool that does it anyway.
Map saved on own pc, safe from raids or ingame mistake regardless of which character you're on beats a map ingame.
Your reasoning is sound but the in-game map item could have uses that do not completely overlap with the external map tools we will continue to use anyway.
One you just proposed I didn't think about is public display, and not only for decoration. You could put a map on a sign for town members to look at for example.
Also consider the map item as an medium to pass specific information to characters you still do not trust fully. If you have a map item you can just trade it in-game... no revealing of forum account or email address. For example if you were considering hiring a witch to place a curse on a specific character or village you could then pass her a map that was specifically drawn to guide her to that village without giving out the position of your own village... or something like that.
Regarding being KO'ed... if you can copy the maps you can then store them in containers so if you are smart enough you can limit the losses. Also maps should be considered (reasonably) valuable items.
I was lucky...