First of all, I enjoyed TFA and I'm looking forward to JJ's Ep9. But, Luke's exile was a bad idea; plus it came in the same movie that Han died in - ensuring that Luke, Leia, and Han would
never share any screen time at all in the ST. Bad planning!
Secondly, where are you getting this stuff about Luke from TFA!? If I didn't know better, I'd say your whole post was satire!
Let's go through your claims one by one.
1.)
"JJ left us with Luke hiding away from Snoke & Ben much like Yoda and Old Ben did after ROTS"
Huh!? Luke was hiding!? Where was that ever explained? And why did Han say Luke left because he felt responsible for what happened with Ben?
2.)
"he set the map up so that only Rey would find it (the last piece was left where rey was, like luke finding the message with R2),which is why he left the last piece of info on Jaka"
I don't even know where to start with this one.
Luke didn't set up anything on Jakku. Lor San Tekka is the one who had
part of a map, and he gave it to Poe to deliver to Leia. It was never intended to stay on Jakku, or have anything to do with Rey.
Are you sure you watched the movie? The only reason Rey got involved was because Poe couldn't get away with that map piece. Are you telling me that Luke's plan involved Poe redirecting BB-8 so that Rey would encounter the droid!?
3.)
"The same thing could have applied in TFA, he hid away on purpose and sent the message to the last jedi so that only Rey would find him and he could complete her training."
What last Jedi? Rey? He would've sent a message to Rey, how? . . . via Lor San Tekka? . . . then through Poe? . . . only to be redirected through BB-8 to reach Rey? You're joking, right?
4.)
"Normally the losing opponent will retreat until they/ or in this case he can amass reinforcements, which is precisely what old man luke was doing during TFA, like old ben and Yoda before him, they knew they couldn't beat the emperor or vader themselves, luke couldn't take on Snoke and Ben by himself, so he had to get reinforcements."
So you wanted Luke to go off in search of reinforcements? What kind of reinforcements needed a multi-year exile? And you're comparing Yoda and Kenobi leaving when Palpatine had full control of an entire army and political authority . . . to Luke leaving when Snoke and Kylo hadn't even taken control of anything. Not even close to the same circumstances, dude.
Luke didn't need to run away and hide. He took on the Emperor, Vader, and the Empire at its peak of power as a Jedi
Knight; but now as a Jedi
Master with 20+ years of learning more about the Force, you wanted him to run away from Snoke, Kylo, and a fledgling First Order? That would be absolutely absurd. If TLJ tried to explain his years missing that way, I would've walked out of the theater.
5.)
"Going into hiding (like Old Ben & Yoda) isn't cowardly if there is a purpose for it, eg to gain reinforcement to continue the fight, its only cowardly the way RJ handled it."
In my opinion, the only way to keep Luke from being a coward was to give him an actual selfless purpose for being gone for those years; and for not trying to come back as 5 planets were destroyed, as Han Solo was murdered, and as his sister was trying (and failing) to reach him in her desperate desire to bring him back.
I don't think you've analyzed the circumstances that TFA forced Luke's story to go. Go back to my post that you quoted and read the 7 points I outlined. Those were all inescapable story elements that TLJ had to make sense of and reconcile. None of the alternatives that you suggest would've made any sense with what was already established in TFA. I'm not ripping TFA as a film; I enjoyed it, and I'm grateful to JJ for re-starting Star Wars in a fun and enjoyable way. But there were plots (the Luke exile in particular) that needed cleaning up before it would lead to nonsensical and regrettable explanations.