FFTCG NA Fan Fair Q&A Summary

Welcome Mysidians! I spent an amazing day at the NA FFTCG Fan Festival in Los Angeles. I was able to meet a bunch of friendly players and I even placed second in the Title Tournament. I have a bunch of topics to write about regarding the Fan Festival but for now I am going to summarize the Q&A for everyone that was not able to attend the event.

The Q&A featured RB, a translator, and Kageyama. The questions came from a predetermined poll that RB conducted. I mainly focussed on writing down answers so I may not have listed all the questions below. Enjoy!

1. Kageyama is largely the sole decider for which characters to put in each Opus.

2. How do they balance cards?
The Hobby Japan Team tests prospective cards every day in real matches. Right before their deadline they have a team meeting where everyone voices their opinions and final balance changes are made.

They gave some examples of how cards changed throughout testing:
-Leila used to be 5k power.
-Nidhogg used to remove two cards from your opponent's hand and would break one forward your opponent controls. After changing it to remove one card from hand, they changed the break to a remove from game.

3. When building new sets, are all formats thought of? ( ie Standard, Title, Limited)
-Generally constructed is thought of first for set design. They do balance the number/colour of backups for draft. They do not think too deeply about title. Kageyama said that when a card needs a little boost sometimes he adds an effect that would help it in title (no example).

4. Asked about bans and rotation.
-Thought about rotation at one time, but now the possibility of rotation is quite low. They do not think there is a need for rotation.

They do worry about some cards. They hinted about a certain 8k 4 CP Earth forward that can deal 4k damage (Dadaluma). They are keeping an eye on things and could utilize bans again in the future.

​5. Fire used to be strong in Chapters, but it is seen by some as the weakest element. Are there plans to address this?

Kageyama is "aware" of fire (everyone laughed hard when the translator said this). However, Kageyama believes that fire is better than some believe. He then provided his Gunslinger Decklist from today.

Kageyama won 8 matches with this deck, I don't know how many he played, but I can't imagine it was too many more since he was all over the place for various events including the boss battle.

He won 4 matches with Paradise (Eald'narche's Special Ability)
He lost 1 match because of Paradise.

He went on to talk about how this deck has many ways to push damage through haste, removal, and unblockable abilities. This deck does not care what your opponent is doing.

Kageyama also recomends Lann and Baugauvern as cards that will make Fire work.

​6. Is Wind too strong as an element?

He does not think so. Believes it is more of a support element. He said Mono Ice and Mono Lightning have showed good results lately and are strong elements, and that nothing is dominant as the meta continously rotates.

7. What is Kageyama's favourite mechanic in FFTCG?

He loves Special Abilities! You can't play same name cards to the field so you often have to use them as CP. Special Abilities are a cool way of using same name cards .

8. Will the Opus 3 Starter alternate art cards ever be released in foil?

They have listened to this request and want to make it happen at some point. They are thinking about how they can implement them.

9. Will there ever be Final Fantasy Spirits Within Card

Purely speaking it is possible, but do not count on it.

10. Will they ever make FFTCG original characters for cards.

They have made special category cards not based on specific titles. They have no plans at this moment to make orginal characters for FFTCG.

11. Will there ever be cards that manipulate the damage zone through healing damage or perhaps swapping cards from your hand with damage?

They do not have any plans for cards with this mechanic. The damage zone has important information about the game and player's decks, they don't want to mess with that. They said it is unlikley to happen, but if it ever did, he would release and article with a bunch of excuses of why they changed their mind.

12. At this point they showed some over-powered Chapters cards and talked about how they learned from their mistakes.

Mateus the Corrupt. 4 CP Ice Summon EX Burst: Pick 1 of the following: Dull all forwards your opponent controls or deal 5k to all dull forwards your opponent controls.

Ceodore. 4 CP Light Forward 8k Power. -If you use 3 or more elements to pay for Ceodore break a character (Forward or Backup!). -If you pay with 4 or more elements to play Ceodore, draw two cards.

13. There were many different card types and keywords in Chapters. Are there any you want to bring to the Opus Series?

One of Kageyama's favourite keywords from Chapters was "Combination". A Combination card is two characters on one card. The example they gave was:

Lightning/Snow. 7 CP Combination. 9k Power. Can use Snow or Lightning to pay its special cost.

Special Ability: [S](Ice)(Ice)(Lightning)(Lightning): Search up to card name Shiva AND Odin and cast it/them without paying its cost.

Kageyama said that this card is too strong but they are very interested in bringing Combination cards to Opus.

RB asked about a Yuna/Rikku/Paine card and Kageyama said "ahhh that would be more like a team card". I thought this could mean combinations would be only two characters but that is in no way confirmed and we could possibly see more than two characters on a combination card.

14. Will there be special collectible cards in the future?

There won't be in Opus 8. But there will be special collectible cards in the near future.

Full art cards could appear in boosters.

15. Could we ever see original promos again in the future? (EX: the Opus 1 promos)

There will be new original promos in the future. They have plans for players to acquire these at retail tournaments as they want them to be special. However they are aware that tournaments are not accessible to all.

Original promos could be available in future boosters but full art original promos would be reserved for retail tournaments.

At this point they showed 4 new spoilers for Opus 8. These are already all over Facebook so I will leave it to you to find and discuss them!

That wraps up the Q&A! Afterwards they announced the winners of the Random Battle achievements and we played some trivia.

I want to finish by saying how friendly and dedicated Kageyama was at this event. He said he will return for Gen Con, Nationals, and of course, Worlds. I am so grateful we have someone like him in charge of the game we love.

I also want shout out to RB for what was an amazing day. I can"t imagine the preparation and stress that led up to this event, but it was all worth it!

in the coming weeks I will write more about the Fan Fest and shout out some more awesome people! Until then Mysidians!

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