After a little lull in activity, KT Racing has brought back the Solar Club Letters to detail its work on Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown, which will see the much-anticipated casino finally make its debut in July.
Officially called the Wintory Casino — maybe hinting at the return of Stuart Wintory, following his daughter Tess’s appearance at the head of the Selene brand in the Ibiza expansion — the site brings back a feature from TDU2. It’s also probably most responsible for TDUSC’s 18+ rating, as many territories (quite rightly) look down on the marketing of gambling to children.
Notably the new communication from KT Racing flags the casino as part of the reason why Season 4 is coming along a month later than expected, with “networking” and a change of art direction noted as causes.
While we don’t know what “networking” refers to in this context, it’s also noted that not all of the casino’s features will arrive upon its debut. However fans won’t have to wait long for more, as there’s a promised “mid-season patch” (as there was for S3) that will bring additional functionality; KT Racing will explain more in an upcoming “Dev Diary”.
It also appears that the “futuristic” vibe of the casino’s design didn’t resonate with fans, and KT Racing took a decision to make the venue more traditional — but did include some concept art screenshots to show us what we could have had…
This is part of a range of aesthetic changes coming in S4 which include the ability to turn off various on-screen informational detail if players want to get away from that augmented reality style. That’s going to be joined by a new no-HUD feature which allows players to turn off the on-screen car data display entirely — which should be particularly engaging in cockpit mode.
Season 4 will also see the introduction of new game economy calculations and the manner in which vehicles are distributed, which is promised to reduce the game’s grind a little — especially after the backlash of the mid-season update which controversially cut rewards for one of the new events.
The 20% boost to payouts for Car Delivery and Navigation events introduced in S3 is now confirmed to persist rather than being removed with S4, as well as being applied to all new S4 events other than the casino itself. While details are scarce for now, KT has also promised to make the Solar Pass “less grindy” for S4, and increase XP earned for daily challenges. More economy changes are planned for S5.
There’ll also be a change coming for ranked reward vehicles, previously available as rewards for placing high enough ranked events and subsequently added to dealerships after an entire season’s gap. That’ll be rejigged so that the cars simply become available to buy right at the start of the season, which will see the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport (S2) and Aston Martin Valour (S3) added to dealers from day one of S4.
They’ll be joined by the car planned as S4’s ranked reward car which, from the looks of the teaser image supplied, appears to be the Volante version of the Aston Martin DB11 that’s already available in coupe form in the game. A second new vehicle, flagged as a “casino car” (and probably a reward for certain actions therein) looks like it’s a Mercedes-AMG GT Black — tracking with Stuart Wintory’s marque of choice.
KT Racing says it will reveal more about Season 4 as well as the Year 2 roadmap in a Developer Diary set to arrive in July prior to the S4 update — neither has a specific date just yet — but has already announced that an update to the KT Engine underpinning the game is coming for Season 5. That’s on the slate for a September launch as TDUSC returns to a three-monthly schedule for updates.
After what was a relatively poorly received launch, it’s encouraging to see that KT Racing continues to keep plugging away at addressing fan complaints — even hiring TDU-enthusiast YouTuber Alex VII (Alexander Arthur) as a community manager — as well as bringing back promised classic features. We’ll be keeping an eye on it, so watch this space for all the latest.
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