GRID Season 3 – Six new cars, Suzuka Circuit, Achievements – Coming April 15th

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You’ve been patiently waiting but it’s finally here. GRID Season 3 arrives on Xbox One, PS4, and PC via Steam on April 15th and is coming soon to Stadia.

Following on from the Hot Hatchbacks of Season 1 and the Track Day Supercars of Season 2, we’re kicking into overdrive with six dream drives and of course, a new circuit too. Ultimate Edition players will get access to Season 3, as soon as it’s available and those with the base game will have some extra additions for free.

The Cars

As mentioned in the Season 3 overview video, there’s only one word to describe the cars featured in GRID Season 3 – fast. Here’s your line-up:

We know you’re going to love tearing up the track in these incredible machines. For Ultimate Edition and Season 3 owners, each of these cars will be available in all game modes. For all GRID players, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Super Sport will be available as a loan car in Multiplayer modes.

On top of these stunning Hypercars, we have a pair of incredible bonus cars – available to everyone no matter which version of GRID you’re playing on.

These two Super GT icons are a blast to drive and sound just as good as they look. Both of these cars will be available to purchase and race for all GRID players in Freeplay and Multiplayer modes.

The Track

Now, the track. Loved by drivers and fans alike with its snaking corners and old-school aesthetic, you’ll be flying to Japan to get to grips with the Suzuka Circuit.

A traditional track by all accounts, Suzuka Circuit will challenge your skill under pressure with its intricate corners and long and sweeping curves, many of which can be taken flat-out, if you dare.

Here’s Matthew Battison, Lead Level Designer, on what makes Suzuka Circuit so special:

“This is the first time that the Suzuka Circuit has featured in the GRID Series, what took us so long?! Over the years, Suzuka Circuit has been heralded as one of the most demanding and rewarding circuits in the world.

Drivers rate this track highly, we do too, so we know GRID players will as well. Suzuka Circuit features almost every type of corner from the famous Esses at the start of the lap to Spoon Curve and the infamous 130R corner at the end of the lap – don’t forget it’s also a figure of eight configuration. It’s not just the full Grand Prix circuit that you can expect to play, we have also included the East and West Courses for you to enjoy too.”

No matter which of the six route variations you choose to race on, each of the nine weather and time of day conditions will be at the disposal of all GRID players.

Customisation Additions

As with Seasons 1 and 2, we’ve also added a bunch of new customisation items to GRID for those with GRID Ultimate Edition.

● 14 new liveries
● Six new livery patterns
● Five new player cards
● Five new player banners

Five of the liveries are unlocked by default but you’ll have to work to unlock through the Career to unlock the rest of the customisation additions – we didn’t want to make things too easy.

Credit Boosts for Freeplay and Multiplayer

Along with the cars, Career events, and customisation items that are added with Season 3, we’ve been hard at work to make some tweaks and changes to everyone’s GRID experience. Building on the recent Community Update that aimed to address GRID player feedback, we’ve continued to make adjustments, with the community at the heart of these decisions.

Here’s Game Designer, Kelly Boyle, on the changes that we’ve made to Credit payouts with Season 3:

“For Season 3, we’ve tackled an issue that the community has brought up with regards to currency awards in Freeplay and Multiplayer – we were told they were too low. Our awesome Dev QA team jumped on the case to verify these findings and collect some sample data to work with. With this information, Alex (one of our coders) and I, dove into the matrix to find the problem.

After a bit of back-and-forth, we came up with a much better solution than originally in place which we hope you’ll all appreciate! Credit rewards for Freeplay and Multiplayer (including Private Lobbies, Public Lobbies, and Quickmatch) have been substantially increased. As a part of this process, we’ve also rebalanced currency payouts for these modes too. What this means is that whilst getting that 1st place actually gets you something worthwhile, for those occasions where you don’t quite make it you’ll still be rewarded appropriately.”

To give you a feel for how different these changes are, the reward values are anywhere between four to more than ten times their previous amount. In Freeplay and Multiplayer, depending on the intensity of the assists you use you’ll see differences in the credits you’re awarded. As you gradually turn down stability control, traction control, and anti-lock baking assists you’ll earn higher and higher rewards. Plus, the more impressive the car, the more impressive the Credit reward – you won’t earn the same for winning a race in a Mini Miglia Challenge as you would in an Acura DPi. We hope these changes make those battles between AI in Freeplay and friends and strangers in Multiplayer that bit more interesting.

New Achievements

Finally, many GRID Ultimate Edition players have been asking for new achievements/trophies to go along with each of the seasons that have been released. Up until this point, we haven’t been able to add any new achievements – that ends now.

Here’s Game Designer, Bradley Whelan, with some info around these additions:

“In Season 3, nine brand new achievements for GRID Ultimate Edition owners have been added to the game. These achievements are based on beating pre-set lap times with certain track and car combinations.

These achievements range in difficulty from easy to challenging – this way, they are accessible to our broad range of players so that everyone has something feasibly beatable from the offset. Don’t feel as if the challenging achievements are going to be too hard to beat if you’re a new player as the times have been designed so that with time, practice, and development they are achievable, therefore even more satisfying when you snag them.”

We spoke to True Achievements who were able to exclusively reveal exactly what you’ll need to do to add these achievements/trophies to your collection.

We really hope you enjoy the changes and additions that come with GRID Season 3. We’re not done with GRID yet, so please feel free to join in with the conversation on the official GRID Forums and on our Discord.

If for some reason you’re yet to play GRID, you can give it a go by downloading the free trial on Xbox One and PlayStation 4.

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[sloppysmusic 1,574]

Catching up on news here as have been busy with the F1 forums for a while. I forgot this game existed but I remember now this is the one Alonso helped with? Does the game require a constant connection to the internet to work? I have a multitude of hardware devices and not all are connected at once, I never play online so it's normally never an issue.