I love the idea of traps and caves! However, if they're going to do this they can't create a half baked dungeon with predictable traps. Keep in mind this will take a lot of work but it'll keep the content fresh and not predictably boring after the first few run through's.
They'll need to create a series of separate caves similar to the network on Sailors Bounty but larger throughout the world. In those caves they'll need to have various spawn points for treasure. Spots where single pieces of treasure spawn and rooms where troves of treasure spawn.
Single treasure spawn locations need to have a chance to randomly activate traps when removing the piece of treasure.
Treasure trove rooms need to be protected by a series of traps that perhaps could be deactivated, if the pirate has enough time, by means of completing some sort of puzzle mini game. Otherwise, if the pirates are low on time they could risk activating the traps and run the chance of dying, loosing some of the treasure, etc...
When a new set of treasure spawns in a cave on a particular island the traps need to randomly be activated. That way the same combinations of puzzles and traps would not be used time and time again. This would continue to give players the feeling of random encounters.
Traps could include:
- Spikes
- Skeletons spawning from coffins
- Gas that steadily kills pirates or incapacitates pirates
(We discovered in Cursed Sails that people dislike control being taken away from their pirate so perhaps if they add some sort feature like that with they could also implement a way for us to regain control of our pirates while they're incapacitated)
- Rooms locking that prevent access to other treasure troves
- Rooms filling with water while also spawning sharks requiring us to drain the water somehow
- Trap doors that lead us out of the cave or into other areas
Anyway those are some very basic ideas but you get the point. We can't just have a series of caves that have the same spike trap in the same location every single time. It needs to be an almost randomly generated experience every time we enter a cave.