You were supposed to have a fake marriage with the diva, so how did you become her father?

After the new version had been running for almost a week, Lu Ran noticed several unexpected data changes in the background.

The most obvious example is the uneven increase in location requests from ordinary players near key areas in the United States.

In some regions, the number of requests remained almost unchanged, while in others, the number of requests increased several times over.

He clicked on the areas where the request volume had surged and found that they were all near the spawn points of the few unique creatures he had set.

Someone posted a strategy guide on the forum, vaguely describing the spawn locations of those unique creatures, saying, "Walk a certain distance in a certain direction from a certain intersection on a certain road, and there is a certain probability of encountering them." Although the description is vague, it is enough to make patient players willing to spend time searching.

In the comments, someone asked for a more specific location, but the original poster did not answer, only saying, "You have to find it yourself; it'll only be interesting if you find it."

Then those areas became lively.

Ordinary players started repeatedly going in and out of those locations. Some went several times and didn't encounter anything, some were lucky enough to encounter something but didn't catch it, and a very few were even luckier and caught the only creature. When they posted screenshots on the forum, the comments section was full of things like "incredibly lucky".

The gold borders and region name suffixes in those screenshots have become the targets of many players.

As the activity range of ordinary players extended into those blank areas, Lu Ran noticed a new situation he had never encountered before—someone had casually taken environmental photos at the location points inside those areas and uploaded them.

Those photos were taken further inland than any of the previous ones, some even crossing the latitude and longitude lines of the wall.

After the image was blurred, a clearer view of the inside of the walled area became visible: a flat cement floor, several neatly arranged ventilation vent covers, and a slender metal pole rising from the ground with a circular device at the top, which Lu Ran couldn't recognize.

He took a separate screenshot of the photo, examined it, and then saved it to the corresponding folder.

The number of pictures in the folder is now approaching three digits. Arranged according to the shooting time, you can see that the outline of the wall is gradually becoming complete, and the features of the ground inside are gradually becoming clearer.

That afternoon, Zhao Yiming came to talk to him about the feature planning for the next version. Halfway through the conversation, he suddenly mentioned, "Recently, the number of location requests in the backend has increased significantly, especially in the areas where new easter eggs have been added. The request density in some locations is almost comparable to the city center. There aren't that many ordinary players in those areas, are there?"

"Someone might have posted a strategy guide," Lu Ran changed the subject.

Zhao Yiming simply said "oh" without asking any further questions and continued discussing the technical architecture.

But Lu Ran noticed that before leaving, he glanced at Lu Ran's computer screen. The screen showed a global view of the heat map, and the location of the few unique creatures was glowing with a pale yellow light.

After seeing Zhao Yiming off, Lu Ran sat in a chair for a while and began to seriously consider something.

He had never publicly revealed the quality grading system for regional creatures before. The rarity of all creatures was controlled by spawn probability and regional restrictions, and players could not see the specific quality level labels.

However, if a clear quality grading system is added, so that players know that the same creature can be classified as S-grade or A-grade, then players will repeatedly try in the same location in order to pursue higher quality.

He opened the system backend and added a new set of parameters in the biological data module: the quality level was set to five levels from high to low: S, A, B, C, and D, with each level corresponding to a different basic value range and appearance effect.

S-rank creatures will have a golden flash effect and additional attribute bonuses after being captured, while D-rank creatures will not.

When the same creature spawns at different times and locations, its quality level will be randomly assigned in the background, and players cannot predict it before capturing it.

The core logic of this design is simple: after a player catches a legendary creature in a certain area, he will think, "If I catch it again, will I encounter a higher quality one?" and then he will go back.

Going back repeatedly means repeatedly staying in the same place, and those are exactly the places Lu Ran most wants people to stay in repeatedly.

He integrated the quality grading configuration into the creature spawning logic and added a rule: creatures with higher quality grades will spawn slightly closer to the interior of the area.

The spawn points of S-level are on average tens of meters deeper than those of D-level. The difference is so small that players will not notice the shift, but it will gradually push the player's activity range inward.

After making these adjustments, he opened a document and began writing a proposal for the trading system.

The core function of the trading system is to allow players to exchange captured creatures, with two exchange methods: free trade and auction.

In free trade, players negotiate prices themselves. The system only provides interfaces for transaction matching and creature transfer, and does not participate in pricing.

In an auction, the seller sets the starting price and the bidding period, and other players place bids within the specified time, with the highest bidder winning.

This system is a common social feature in ordinary collection games, but in this game it has an additional function: it further amplifies the player's motivation to pursue high-quality creatures.

If a player catches an A-grade rare creature, he might think, "If I sell this one for gold coins, I can go and farm for an S-grade one."

To farm S-rank creatures, he has to repeatedly go to the locations where those creatures spawn.

He also added a transaction tracking mechanism to the system: each transaction will have a complete log stored in the background, including the IDs of both parties, the quality level of the creatures traded, the transaction price, and the transaction time.

This way, if an account frequently sells high-quality creatures, or frequently captures high-quality creatures from the same location and then sells them, the system will automatically flag it.

After Lu Ran finished writing the proposal, he sent it out.

Zhou Mingzhe replied in the group, "With the trading system and quality grading, this combination is enough to keep players grinding for a while." Chen Mo added, "The auction function needs to be coordinated with the operations team through events, otherwise players may not know how to use it."

Lu Ran replied: "Don't push out any events after launch. Let players discover and explore on their own. The operations team only needs to provide basic guidance."

After the plan was approved, the development team embedded the trading system and quality grading interface into the game code in less than a week.

On the first day of the new version's release, there wasn't much fluctuation in the backend, as most players were still figuring out the quality grading rules. The next day, someone posted a screenshot on the forum showing a newly captured legendary creature with a line of small gold text below it that read "Quality: S".

His caption was just three words: "Made a killing."

The post gained popularity very quickly, with replies ranging from "I caught a B-grade" to "How do you determine if an S-grade will appear?"

Some people started studying the refresh patterns of quality levels, some started compiling the appearance probability of S-grade creatures in different regions, and others started listing their high-quality creatures in the trading channel at ridiculously high prices.

Lu Ran stared at the trading system's first-day data in the backend for a while and noticed an interesting phenomenon: after the quality grading system went live, the number of captures and location requests in those key areas both increased significantly. Although the probability of S-grade creatures appearing was set very low, players thought, "Maybe I'll get one if I try again," so they kept trying.

The accounts that were flagged also appeared in this growth data.

Their capture logs show that they've caught multiple legendary creatures of grades B and A in the last two days. The quality distribution isn't significantly different from that of ordinary players, but the number of captures is far above average. This indicates that they are indeed spending time repeatedly farming the same spot.

One of the accounts listed an A-grade creature on the auction house on the very day the trading system went live. The starting price for that creature wasn't high, but the number of bidders was unusually large, and the final price far exceeded the market average.

The transaction records show that the buyer is a regular player with an IP address located in Japan.

Lu Ran highlighted that transaction record separately and wrote in the remarks: "Biological circulation in this area is normal, and no abnormal fund flows have been detected."

He closed the trading page and reopened the heatmap for a quick look.

The density of bright spots around the location of those few unique creatures on the map is several times higher than it was a week ago. The tracks of ordinary players are mixed with those of the specific accounts, making it impossible to distinguish them on the map, but he knows which tracks he needs to pay attention to.

He turned off the computer, stood up, and walked to the window. The wind of late September was already blowing in through the cracks in the window, carrying a coolness that was drier than in summer.

People on the street downstairs started wearing light jackets. Some people were looking down at their phones as they walked, the light from the screen reflecting on their faces, making it impossible to tell whether they were scrolling through social media or playing a game to catch creatures.

He stood there for a while, then turned and walked back to his desk, sat down, turned on his computer again, and went through the latest pictures in those area folders in the background. Walls, ventilation ducts, concrete floors, metal poles.

Each image has a little more detail and a little more confirmation than the last. These details, when combined, are beginning to piece together a much more complete picture than before.

...