In TFA, Han looks at BB8's map and says that it's not complete; it's essentially useless. Even when Poe completes the acolyte's mission to return the partial map to Leia, it still does them no good without Artoo (figuratively and literally) putting the pieces together. It seems like a stretch that Luke would have deliberately planted a remaining fragment in Artoo knowing the lengths it would take to bring it all together. Very inefficient, and too likely to fail for such an important ambition of being found with potential galaxy-saving answers or wisdom. How many times was BB8 (and the map) on the verge of being taken?
And when Rey asks Han why Luke left, this is his response:
"One boy (an apprentice) turned against him and destroyed it all. Luke felt responsible; he just walked away from everything."
There's more than just an implication there that Luke's disappearance was a deliberate full-scale abandonment. I'm not saying that your interpretation of a proactive Luke leaving breadcrumbs would be completely unjustified; just that the explicit dialogue and plot of TFA seems to point, instead, to the interpretation that Johnson got from it. Luke "just walked away from everything" is the most explicit explanation that TFA provided.
But if he had a way back, then you'd have to explain why he wasn't using it. He'd presumably been missing for years. His absence during the escalation of the First Order's tyranny would have to be reconciled with his proactive desire to help prevent or stop it. When is it too long to be gone and still have it make sense for a proactive version of Luke? I think it's reasonable to see that the exposition in TFA suggested a Luke who wasn't planning to come back.
Going there to die alone makes total sense if you apply the context provided by TLJ: Luke wanted to prevent the Jedi (and Jedi hubris) from being the genesis for more Sith corruption. If you wanted to stop a religion IRL, and you were the last of that religion, dying and destroying its scriptures could constitute an end to it.
I couldn't agree more.