GGG What is your Order of Priorities for Game Design?

Hi, a quick intro to cover my background: I was pretty much born with the emergence of the Internet, with a computer in my hands. I've played games like Warcraft II, Starcraft 1-2, DotA2, HoN, LoL, WoW(which I kind of regret), Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 1-2, Hitman, and most importantly Diablo 1-2-3. I have been hired at some point by Ubisoft Montreal as a tester, worked there for about 8 months on projects like Assassin's Creed, Farcry 2 and Prince of Persia and then moved on. I consider myself as a hardcore gamer with a mature critical sense who does not settle for mediocrity, even if it means not playing anything at all. I'm a die hard Diablo 2 fan and I consider it to be the greatest game I have ever played.
I have the most immense respect for what I believe it is that you guys are trying to accomplish here, and i'm thrilled by the idea of being possibly implicated in your project, as a new member of this community. I have learned through my experience at Ubisoft that the niche for real non-casual games, made by people who truely care about delivering an inspireing product that has a soul, is something that is extremely rare nowadays, because in these times people seem to care about money more than authenticity. I was disgusted to realise that the goal of the casual gaming industry is to basically sell a game before it's even released, and that this industry encourages consumers to view games as ephemere and superficial distractions, in the same way shitty mass-produced Hollywood sci-fi movies of the last few years are perceived by the masses.

So, now on the main subject of my topic, my question to you guys is: Because of the fact that it is clear that you have limited ressources, what is the order of priority that you have decided to give to the main elements that define your game? What comes first between Core Story and artistic game direction, Combat mechanics, Level design, itemization mechanics, etc?

The reason I believe this question is so important is because if the community members want to be able to provide you with the appropriate feedback, suggestions, or concerns without actually flooding you with unconstructive criticism, they have to know explicitly on what aspect of the game their energy spent will actually be useful to the devs. This is obviously a hardcore game, and it is up to everybody here to contribute to help it reach the level where it truely becomes something authentic and appealing for years to come.

I've spent around 1 hour in the game so far (i just recently learned of the existence of the game) and what has shocked me above any other aspect of the game is the quality of the community, but in 1 hour i've also seen so many things that would be worth talking about and/or working on, and because i get the bigger picture I know it's completely unrealistic to believe that every single thought that crossed my mind and things that i noticed are going to be discussed and improved. I would much rather provide you feedback on things I know for sure will be important to you, because you will have explicitly told me so, as the makers of this game who deserve recognition and respect for their creation. I know my post was a bit lengthy, but i sincerely hope it'll be the beginning of something great, peace!

Given Chris' previous post history, I would characterize POE's design dogma such:

1. PoE is intended to be competitive and "hardcore-friendly" this implies:
a) stay consistent about design mechanics (don't suddenly 'casualify/streamline' content like WOW does on a regular basis)
b) maintain depth of tactics and strategy of builds (this means, adding more skill gems, fixing the fluidity/viability of certain skills, adding unique items, improving itemization)
c) maintain difficulty of encounters and introduce new challenges where possible (this means, improving AI, adding new optional bosses/areas to each act)
d) non-linear - IE, there should be "no best zone to farm" or "best route to take to beat the game" -- "best" should be a case for case basis, where players try to discover the most effective ways to compete and win; this does not mean "nerfing flavor of the month builds" but promoting experimentation and making sure certain ideas and builds do not stifle creativity (this means nerfs should only come after significant analysis)
e) commit to long-term based gameplay changes, anything added to the game should have long-term impact -- so like, they can't easily add 25 new random mods to gear in an expansion, because this makes finding "good gear" either too easy or too hard; simultaneously, future expansions cannot invalidate hardwork people do for the first year or two of POE; and also simultaneously, future expansions of content should have a purpose for being, they should add new content we want to explore
2) PoE is intended to be "friendly" to players, so that while it's "hardcore-friendly" it has a relatively low barrier of entry for new players this implies:
a) lots of options for added or reduced difficulty
b) lots of added features which make using the GUI or learning the game easier
c) lots of "quality of life features" to improve the game
d) safety nets like how hardcore transfers dead characters to softcore for further play, if players wish
e) temporary ladders for racing and experimentation - this means the game is friendly to players who don't want to deal with massively accumulated wealth in the 'safety net' leagues as well as friendly to players who like to hoard things for years

Basically, I think there are a few more "dogmas" of design I think GGG will follow for POE, but it's easiest just to sum it up as: PoE is about items. ARPGs are about items. Chris and the team will endeavor to make sure picking items is interesting, deep and fun. That finding, trading, selling, and using items is exciting. That there be sufficient challenge so that finding items is rewarding and that things be done to preserve the value of items. To expand the possibility of what items can be found and used in various manners. So... yeah items. PoE's balance design will be focused on making sure all that happens.

For instance, I spoke to Qarl not too long ago, and after OB starts, they don't actually intend to nerf Uniques that are released into the game. Once they release a new unique, it's going to stay as is. This means they of course, need to be sure it's 100% balanced before it goes live, but what it also means, is you cannot find some amazingly awesome build using a unique, and then have GGG nerf it because they don't like how it's 10% more effective than they calculated it to be (this is something Riot or Blizzard might do to their game in a patch, rather than try to balance the game in a less rigid manner). If you discover an amazing build and it works, good for you. Chances are though, someone else will discover a build that is another 10% better in a month or two.

From GGG's business stance... they want to cater to the group of players the industry is neglecting right now: "hardcore" players. So to that end, they are monetarily held to a high standard. If you're worried about them arbitrarily making changes to the game to make it easier or dumbed down to appeal to a wider audience, well I hope you'll be wrong. I'm not going to say GGG won't make controversial balance changes, but I would hope they make them on the basis of making the game better and not on profiting on some vague notion that one must casualify a game to make it widely popular.

Thanks for your reply! It shows people care in here and it's so refreshing in these times of massive internet trolling. What you wrote has been rather informative for me and i thank you for that. However it is not the precise information i was looking for. Maybe the way i formulated my question is not as clear as i would have hoped so I'm going to try to clarify that. What i want to know basically comes down to this:

I want to know their scale of values for the design of this game in order to be able to get a clear intuitive sense of what is going to be welcomed by them, what are they receptive to? what is the scale of importance of what they care about? is the dev team open to Artistic direction criticism such as, for example, Level design criticism? what about monsters and bosses AI, monsters design, and other subdivisions of the combat element of the game? It is 100% clear to me after having read what you said that there is clear emphasis on technical character mechanics revolving around items and skill builds, but what about the artistic aspects of the game that are the foundations of the game basically, such as story design for example, what weight do these aspects of the game hold to their eyes? does it come AFTER or BEFORE the itemization part of the game?

The quality of a game for me comes down to the attention paid to DETAIL. Obviously the trade off for such a thing is TIME and ENERGY. The question at this point is how far are they willing to go? the main question i asked on this thread was so that i could get an accurate sense of that. I'm about to look at this game pretty closely, probably for quite some time come, with a pair of fresh new eyes. That can be very valuable to people who have been working on a project for 6 years and who genuinely want to give birth to something that is authentic and of quality. I want to help, but I want to do it right.