Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown - Players Hub Newsletter

Kylotonn released their third monthly newsletter about their upcoming open world MMO racing game, Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown. This time, the focus is the Solar Hotel, which will act as a global hub for all the players.

The Solar Hotel is a fictionnal building created specifically for the game to host the player character's suite, garage, and most of the RPG features one could expect from a TDU game: clothing shops, hairdressers, surgeons (because you know you'll want to perfect that Habsburg jaw...) as well as things more directly related to the driving experience, like a list of activities, leaderboards, and the possibility to throw a challenge to a random person you just met while walking in the hotel lobby. And maybe the reason why you decided to challenge that person is because they were bragging about having their car displayed in one of the four slots that showcase the best performers of the day.

The lobby of the Solar Hotel illustrates our desire to get players together and help them interact. TDUSC is not just a racing game, it's a game for fans of beautiful cars, for racing or cruising around with friends, so it was essential for us to provide a place for players to meet up. The most obvious way to do this was with social hubs where players move around with their avatars rather than at 300km/h on HKI behind the wheel of a hypercar. In the first Solar Club Letter, we explained that players meet in dealerships and workshops, but the Solar Hotel is the central meeting hub in TDUSC.
(Alain Jarniou, Creative Director)

One of those spots seems to be reserved to whoever earned the most FRIM. This confirms the return of a feature from the previous games, which encouraged you to perform various stunts such as drifting, near missing traffic cars or just zooming at sustained high speeds while free roaming to fill up your FRIM bar. Doing this was a way to earn money in the past few games, under the condition you banked it manually before crashing or stopping, or you'd lose it all. There is nothing to confirm or deny that FRIM will still work in the same way of be reworked, but there is definitely some room to expand that feature further from what it had to offer previously in the TDU series.

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Your living quarters will be upgraded as you climb up the ranks both figuratively and literally: As you progress in the game, you will gain access to better apartments in the upper floors of the tower. Old TDU fans may be disappointed to hear they'll be forced to stay in the same building, but that could be just a temporary limitation, as Alain Jarniou states individual houses are "part of a long list of features we have already researched for future content in the medium and long term" - hinting at potential DLCs already being planned during TDU:SC's lifespan.

The newsletter also gives a bit of lore: the Solar Crown competition is hosted by a mysterious organisation named Radiant - which doesn't hint at anything from the past games so far - which has commissioned the building of the Solar Hotel. A new character is mentioned as well, Vivian, President of the Solar Crown Organization Committee, which raises another question: is Tess Wintory still in top form in the TDU universe?

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On a more serious note, the letter ends with the following: "reservations and the first tours will open soon." A cheeky hint at a closed beta?
About author
GT-Alex
Global motorsports enjoyer, long time simracer, Gran Turismo veteran, I've been driving alongside top drivers since the dawn of online pro leagues on Gran Turismo, and qualified for the only cancelled FIA GTC World Tour. I've left aside competitive driving in 2020 to dedicate myself to IGTL, a simracing organisation hosting high quality events for pro racers and customers, to create with friends the kind of events we wished we could have had. We strive to provide the best events for drivers and the best content for viewers, and want to help the simracing scene grow and shine further in the global esports scene.

Comments

I hope this will be worth the hype, for the delay. They have had countless time to perfect this game to be a true successor to
TDU and TDU2 that I played countless hours on my Xbox 360.
 
I hope this will be worth the hype, for the delay. They have had countless time to perfect this game to be a true successor to
TDU and TDU2 that I played countless hours on my Xbox 360.
I still have TDU2 on steam when bought new, and have countless hours of tdu on 360. Its still a very fun game.
 
I hope this will be worth the hype
Maybe i read the room wrong but i am not really seeing much hype for this game, since there is also not really anything to go by except some screenshots and a rather not that good looking cgi trailer of cars floating through some container port.
 
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I must admit that after the Crew 2 introduced boats, hoverboards, planes, helicopters, it would be a nice addition to be able to land with a helicopter on the roof of this luxurious hotel and to do some boat races around the harbor and in HK channels (the map is too small for planes, they would be useful just for acrobatics).

But still no gameplay preview. The way seems to be much longer than expected.

Was the too early communication aiming to create a hype preventing the hype around a potential The Crew 3? Both publishers being French it may be the case, but anyway, TC3 should come out before TDUSC and I don't think the players looking forward to play a new open world racing game will skip this game to wait for TDUSC. To be fair, we haven't seen real gameplay from TC3, but at least some kind of ingame trailer but that's Ubisoft, never believe what this company shows in trailers even if it looks like proper gameplay...
 
GT-Alex
Premium
Maybe i read the room wrong but i am not really seeing much hype for this game, since there is also not really anything to go by except some screenshots and a rather not that good looking cgi trailer of cars floating through some container port.
Dealerships are confirmed already, some thematic, some manufacturer specific (I assume Ferrari still doesn't want to be mixed with the "plebs". Houses might be DLC.
 
I must admit that after the Crew 2 introduced boats, hoverboards, planes, helicopters, it would be a nice addition to be able to land with a helicopter on the roof of this luxurious hotel and to do some boat races around the harbor and in HK channels (the map is too small for planes, they would be useful just for acrobatics).

But still no gameplay preview. The way seems to be much longer than expected.

Was the too early communication aiming to create a hype preventing the hype around a potential The Crew 3? Both publishers being French it may be the case, but anyway, TC3 should come out before TDUSC and I don't think the players looking forward to play a new open world racing game will skip this game to wait for TDUSC. To be fair, we haven't seen real gameplay from TC3, but at least some kind of ingame trailer but that's Ubisoft, never believe what this company shows in trailers even if it looks like proper gameplay...
Just no

I hate the boats in TC2
 
GT-Alex
Premium
Houses will be just fast travel points i'm afraid

sad
It's been explicitly mentionned they'd work the same way as before and be "small player hubs" as well. So far, only thing I'm worried about is all the character cosmetics shops being exclusively in the tower. I'd love to have a questionable back alley surgery joint where I could aim again for the longest and pointiest face possible.
 
Just no

I hate the boats in TC2
No what? You don't like boats or ypu didnt like their implementation in TC2 ?

Anyway, as the helicopter, after viewing the channels in HK, it would be better to keep boats and helicopters for roaming, not racing. Another point of view of the map, if it looks good, which I hope and is promised by Kyloton. These would be just some luxury items, to go through the map faster than with a car.

By the way, I can confirmed the Crew 1 has better handling than the Crew 2 and the map, the lightning, the amount of locations, there is no comparison. But with a RTX 3070, TC2 is flawless in 4k, but TC1 has to be run with the inferior resolution (it still looks and feels 2 times better and has a real night lightning ; as a tourist the US lightning I remember is the one I see in TC1, not the one I see in TC2). Don't get me wrong, I had lot of doubts avout TC2 and got it in a huge sale, but the game is really different from TC1. Inferior in physics and graphics, but it hss boats and planes.

TDU SC should learn about that. Roaming seems to be a thing, in a boat or un a helicopter, it's an interesting point.
 
It's been explicitly mentionned they'd work the same way as before and be "small player hubs" as well. So far, only thing I'm worried about is all the character cosmetics shops being exclusively in the tower. I'd love to have a questionable back alley surgery joint where I could aim again for the longest and pointiest face possible.
Yeah we need to make them funny characters
 
No what? You don't like boats or ypu didnt like their implementation in TC2 ?

Anyway, as the helicopter, after viewing the channels in HK, it would be better to keep boats and helicopters for roaming, not racing. Another point of view of the map, if it looks good, which I hope and is promised by Kyloton. These would be just some luxury items, to go through the map faster than with a car.

By the way, I can confirmed the Crew 1 has better handling than the Crew 2 and the map, the lightning, the amount of locations, there is no comparison. But with a RTX 3070, TC2 is flawless in 4k, but TC1 has to be run with the inferior resolution (it still looks and feels 2 times better and has a real night lightning ; as a tourist the US lightning I remember is the one I see in TC1, not the one I see in TC2). Don't get me wrong, I had lot of doubts avout TC2 and got it in a huge sale, but the game is really different from TC1. Inferior in physics and graphics, but it hss boats and planes.

TDU SC should learn about that. Roaming seems to be a thing, in a boat or un a helicopter, it's an interesting point.
The implementation was my issue as well as being forced to do the awful boat races

If it's just on free roam I wouldn't mind all that much
 
The implementation was my issue as well as being forced to do the awful boat races

If it's just on free roam I wouldn't mind all that much
Well, I only did one race on a speed boat, it may becomes boring after a while. I have navigated around the map with the hovercraft, which is fun, and It seems the weather doesn't affect the waves. Like the driving, oversimplified physics don't help.

But that's a first attempt to implement something new in an open world racing game (well, a dedicated one, it is not new for GTA). It was just a suggestion and I don't think it will happen in TDU. I just hope the driving physics will be better than those of the current games of this type, I assume the downgrade in physics of The Crew is a response to users but, personnally, I expect something else. As I've already said, I think V Rally 4 was an amazingly fun game in terms of physics, simplified but believable and enjoyable. If Kyloton deliverz the same kind of physics for TDU it would be the best game of its kind.
 
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