In theory I like this, as you said we want PVP, let us go find it! Whenever I see a suggesting like this, I like to ask myself "what can the most toxic crews on the sea do to abuse this new mechanic, and how bad would it be?" The answer is, not too bad, but I'm still not sure it's a good idea.
I think the biggest challenge is SBMM. When defending treasure, the skill-based match-making tries to (and hopefully soon will) match you with a crew that is close-ish in skill. Showing defenders on the map at all times will give the strong PVP'ers immediate reconnaissance and be able to find less skilled crews to go terrorize and troll. In that way, I think circumventing SBMM is a bad idea.
My other thought is we're all hoping this won't be an issue soon. Once cross-stamp match-making is released in the next update this year, we will (hopefully) match faster with similarly skilled crews. In other words, you have a decent idea, and Rare is already working on a parallel effort to fix the issue you're saying needs fixing. I think showing champions on the map also helps to alleviate queue times, the biggest challenge there is many hourglass players are "streak cheesing" (which I don't actually believe to be cheese at all) where they get a two streak and turn in because that offers virtually the same allegiance as turning in a four streak, but with much less risk. I think you would also be able to find champions on the seas much more frequently if they improve the allegiance rewards a bit.
tl;dr; We're all looking forward to the next update with bated breath, and hope it will remedy a number of issues. Thanks for sharing!
