If you were the Creative Director on Andromeda, what would you have done differently?

Would change the overall tone of the game from light and goofy to dark and mysterious.

Give Ryder a backbone
an option to not recruit squadmates
the option to remove squadmates from the roster
an option to kill Reyes and have Zia take his place
use all squadmates for the Archie ship mission
a third option when it came to choosing the salarian or krogan. Have Ryder choose to ignore both and leave
add the power wheel

If I was Creative Director the first thing I would do is look for a replacement that could do the job.

I should have been more specific. Is that vision doable within the existing budget and time constraints? Or are we talking about a fantasy schedule and fantasy budget?

Anything is "doable" if the primary features are set in stone within the confines of the given budget. The problem with MEA is nothing was ever truly set in stone. BioWare Montreal wasted a lot of time building prototypes and thinking about what the game could be, rather than just executing on the core idea. BioWare Montreal lacked proper guidance, and it didn't help that the creative director was changed halfway into the game's development cycle.

Were I the creative director, I would have that thought, then immediately determine that it was a silly idea, because on top of being a logistical nightmare that would only compound the logistical nightmare of being a less experienced team to an entirely new engine, I would understand that procedural content, and especially procedural narrative were not things that stylistically gelled with Mass Effect's identity. I would understand that the design practices required by procedural generation would do nothing but detract from the story-telling strengths that BioWare had established throughout all their great franchises. But of course, I had the prescience to know that his open world thing would have diminishing returns, and quick.

If, through some great fit of insanity, I tell my team to go ahead and try this, I would hopefully have the presence of mind to fail fast, and accept that my team's procedural generation wasn't working, and move on to ideas with more concrete potential.
Yeah, and incidentally, procedural generation with a BioWare story just aren't feasible within any reasonable budget. The compromises necessary to get those things tow work would severely impair one or the other, and the development resources to just get the system working is quite evidently not worth the effort.

And as it so happens, just because something is doable, does not mean it's fun. If after months of prototyping, you haven't found a way make a feature work, you drop that feature. EA didn't step in to stop a genius from completing his work, it seems that they only interfered because whatever he was doing was simply not coming together.

1. He/she has that?
2. and 3. That would have only caused many importing issues just like ME2 had.
4. Clearly Reyes was set up to be very important in future, killing him off so easily would make him irrelevant.
5. That would only make things too easy and overpowered for players.
6. That's fucking retarded! Also Ryder had to have go to one of them to escape Archon's ship.
7. And what would you do with current wheel?

Well, really if you're bringing back the power wheel, the current wheel wouldn't need to be drastically redesigned. If I had my way here, I'd dump consumables, make them actual weapon mods, and replace those slots on the wheel with a small selection of extra abilities.

Rather be the head of marketing since the game was fine. I would have just put up neon signs to advertise the thing abd make sure it was clear "this isn't Shepard's story. This isn't the trilogy. Look elsewhere if you can't move on after 5 years."

Apparently some just really needed it even more obvious than it was made...

How would you have addressed the memes, the trolling, and the constant internet hate around facial animations in the game?

If I could do one thing different, it would definitely be lessening SAM's role. I like SAM and the themes and concepts involved with him, but they just had him do way too much. Now if we were solo just us and him like Master Chief and Cortana that is fine, but we have a team of people with us who barely do anything. I would have limited him to a few things and have the crew handle the rest. For example consult Lexi on anything biological, consult Suvi on anything scientific, and consult Gil on anything mechanical. That lets our non-squad crew be just as involved as the squad.