I'm in the process of making a multiplayer game that's based on pirating. There is lots of water/ocean in the game world and I want to give players a reason to explore the bottom of the oceans.

I had the idea to put in sunken treasure but want some suggestions on how it should work.

I was thinking that if an NPC or player ship is destroyed some of it's contents would sink to the bottom of the ocean. Players would actually have to store items on the ship to carry them to different continents since they wouldn't have a lot of space in their inventory.

I think there could also be treasure maps that drop off enemy monsters if treasure has sat in the ocean for too long.


What are your ideas?

Forgive me my poor English in advance!

1. Maybe you can encourage players to explore the under sea by rewarding them experiences. They will receive certain amount of experiences when sending sailors to collect treasures under sea. I don't know whether there is a level system in your game, but if you have such a system, balancing the experiences obtained by exploiting undersea and that get by normal ways is very tricky.

2. Some rare materials must be exploited in some specific spots under sea.

3. What's more, if player's goods will sink under sea, will some players rob others' goods by hitting weak ships. It will leads to imbalance between those novice players and experts in game. Yet in other aspect, it is intriguing to simulate a real pirate world. Maybe a EVE-like game?

I assume that the oceans are vast in your game and thus searching every tile is not feasible.

I would have a few fantastical treasures hidden on certain squares and perhaps guarded by legendary monsters (e.g. Kraken).

Then to locate the treasures you either need to find out about them via treasure maps or talking with the locals etc. To aid with the location perhaps introduce a magical sextant that would give you hints if you were getting hotter or colder if you were in the vicinity of a hoard.

Overall I would prefer a few purposely placed legendary treasures rather than several just falling off NPC ships.