We’re quickly approaching the September release date of NBA 2K22 and while we’ve gotten a lot of info about new features for the game and what they plan to do for the NBA, they haven’t given as much info about the WNBA yet. On Thursday, that changed as the team behind NBA 2K released some new information about how they plan on handling The W mode feature in their game.
The two biggest changes are going to be the addition of a new progression system and what they’re calling the “Off-Day experience.” These changes are meant to give players playing through a WNBA career more to do than just play regular-season games.
The changes will start with NBA 2K22 with a new badge progression feature. These badges will improve the player in skills such as finishing, shooting, playmaking and defense. This will give players the ability to customize how they want to play with their MyPlayer. Every skill set will have a meter that is filled as you play games. Playing games will also earn badge points that allow the player to equip more badges in the skills they want to improve. Managing and editing your badges will be easy with the ability to create custom loadouts specific to your MyPlayer.
When you’re not playing games, NBA 2K22 will have activities for you to continue to shape your player. These off-day activities can affect your progression stats, popularity, and in-game currency. The three off day activities available to players in The W will be:
- Scrimmages
- Team Practices
- Contact Workouts
While scrimmages build up team chemistry, team practices can help players fill up their skills and talk to their coaches. Contact workouts are interesting because it will give the player an opportunity to learn new skills while also interacting with other stars such as Candace Parker, A’ja Wilson, and Nneka Ogwumike. These workouts can build up the connections players have with these stars by playing games of 1-on-1, 2-on-2, or 3-on-3. Once these contacts are made the player will have a contact they can always go back to in future workouts. This means hanging out with the WNBA’s biggest stars in your free time and of course learning everything they have to show you.
We’ll need to see how these changes all work out in NBA 2K22, but they sound like promising new additions to a mode that needs more features. While we one day want to see just as much to do on the WNBA side of the game, as there is to do on the NBA side, it’s nice to see that more content is being added. Hopefully future iterations will continue building on this.
