I can agree that the tilemap is very basic and I though it has some really great/advanced features that I havent seen well implemented anywhere else (like the generation of collisionshapes) it lacks certain very fundamental features. (Yes it wouldn’t be hard to have a tilesize param set in the properties of tilemap instead of setting out tiles).
It is also only one way of creating a tilemap, a single mesh where all tiles are being rendered always, and leaves out dynamic tilemaps, isometric etc.
Working with the engine for a while I have l learned when it might be suitable to use it and when it’s preferable to create your own system (which is not hard at all in Defold) using data from Tiled or similar 3rd party tool.
Defold has never claimed to be giving you all the finished solutions for a specific games but rather the tools to build it yourself.
Remember Unity released its first version of tilemaps in 2017.2 so claiming that it is a very standard thing in other engines is really not true either 
Roll up your sleeves and create your own. I’ve done a few dynamic ones that is lightingfast with gameobjects/sprites and gives you more control over everything you would like to do.
6 Likes