Hi everyone, RB here! Just wanted to thank everyone who came out to our Final Fantasy TCG Fan Fair yesterday. I hope you all had a great time, and I hope those of you watching at home enjoyed seeing Boss Fight in action. There was a lot of hard work put into making everything happen for this event, and I'm glad everyone had a fun time.
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One of the big things that was planned for this event was the panel discussion with myself and Kageyama-san. I reached out to the community and had you all submit questions that I got to ask him yesterday. For everyone at the event, it seemed like you all really enjoyed it. That said, I know we had some technical difficulties on the live stream and the audio wasn't there for myself and Aileen, you know, the two people speaking English. Thankfully, all is not lost, as Alex Scott at The Mysidia post put together a summary of the panel here: https://bit.ly/2GAOU1o This was a great write up and hit all of the key points of our discussion, I definitely suggest checking it out.
I also wanted to talk a bit about some of my favorite things to come out of the panel! First off, I loved how right off the bat we got to hear a LOT about how the game is made, especially how the Opus series has allowed the team to sort of, make up for past mistakes. The part about how the card templates have changed to be visually clearer was great to hear about, especially as a published card game designer myself.
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I think anyone who is looking to create their own games should definitely take this advice. If the cards look too similar, when functionally they're different, it makes the game much harder to follow. This is especially true with the fact that we live stream the game, it's important to know at a glance what type of card is being played, not only for those watching, but even to pick up the pace of those playing the game itself. I'm really glad with where the Opus series improved on this.
It was also pretty funny to hear about how some cards that we already love to play, or feel are really good, were even more powerful in testing. Leila at 5000 power would be absolutely ridiculous! I play her in my deck, and I feel like she's good where she ended up. Could you imagine if Nidhogg stayed at Remove 2 cards from your opponent's hand AND Break a Forward? The Rinoa/Time Mage deck would be even more popular right now I think.
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I'd also really like to see Combination Cards become a thing again, though maybe a bit weaker than how they appeared in Chapter Series. While a YRP card would be awesome, there are some great duos I'd love to see and play with: Vanille/Fang, Zidane/Garnet, Edgar/Sabin, Ysayle/Estinien, Cecil/Rosa... I could go on for awhile I think. Short response: I'm all for this and would love to see it happen.
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I thought Kageyama-san's points on Fire were really smart, and a different perspective from how many players look at the game right now. I'd like to try giving Fire another shot soon, I think. Well, especially after previewing Ark Angel HM. That card was insane. Two damage on attack??? It even works well with Volker.
We also got to see a new Raiden, pretty straightforward. It does mean that you need to pretty much always worry that you're going to lose a Forward if Lightning has 4 Backups active, so... playing around that and having answers will certainly be important. Of course, Lightning can now bluff that it has Raiden, and you don't even need to play the card at all. I think we may start to see the Meta shift to have more 3 CP or less Forwards, since it will typically always be a net CP gain over an opponent who uses a card like this. As Kageyama-san mentioned, it's even probably great in Wind/Lightning.
Tifa, from the new FINAL FANTASY VII Starter Set coming next month seems like a pretty fun card. She costs 2 CP if Cloud is in play, and Final Heaven could pretty much just say "Break a Dull Forward" since not much can live through 10,000 damage. I hope we start seeing some new FFVII tribal decks with all of the support it's getting.
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Lastly, we saw a new Brave Exvius Legend, Dark Fina! I did an impromptu "Card of the Week" segment on her during the panel that got a pretty good reaction from people. I was happy that the format of my articles has become something so recognizable at this point, that when I make a joke about it, people got what was going on. That was a good feeling. She's also a REALLY cool card. Ice has really typically been either early or mid game cards, but Dark Fina is very definitely "late game," not only being a high cost card herself, but suggesting you include high cost summons in your deck as well. As Kageyama-san pointed out, the summon doesn't NEED to be high cost, a free Diabolos when she enters would be just as good. With how much I love Wind decks, it's really tempting to think about Ice/Wind with this card, but I'm also excited to see how others put Dark Fina to use.
After the panel, we did Trivia that I had put together. A lot of the questions were Final Fantasy Trivia that I love. It was funny how only one contestant in the room knew that Cloud was in Dirge of Cerberus. Come on guys, did you think the whole Avalanche gang abandoned Vincent? They're all in there! I highly recommend the game, Dirge of Cerberus is actually one of my favorite Final Fantasy experiences. Even the tiebreaker game was something I was really anticipating. Some of the others back in the Square Enix office thought that it would be too easy to quickly remember and repeat the title "Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift." The tension in the room was great, people who knew the answer were screaming, but I imagine when prizes are on the line it's hard to remember the full subtitle of anything with a long name!
Kageyama-san closed out the night by letting everyone know that he plans to return to America a few times this year, especially with the World Championship being right here in LA this year, so I'm excited to get to spend more time with him in the future. He's a great producer and really cares about this game, and I think that was the most important part of doing the panel for me. While I get to talk to him directly when we're collaborating on things, not everyone does get that chance. I hope those of you who were there really appreciated the time he took out to talk to us.
I also appreciate every one of you who took time out to talk to me. You all shared stories about your locals and how they've been growing, how you'd like to talk more on ways to get even bigger, or asked questions about what you could do to help more. I'm just in awe of how far we've come in such a relatively short time.
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Here's hoping we all have more opportunities to get together like this in the future!
~RB