Regardless, who else is just looking forward to roam around and have fun shooting things?

I have actually been wanting a open world mass effect game like skyrim, the witcher 3 and the other open games that are out there where you can go where you want when you want. So yes I really am excited and happy about ME:A that's suppose to be open world

I agree, if the game play is at a minimum ME3 level of goodness (hopefully a step forward) then it'll make exploration bearable. I still hope to God the side content is more akin to TW3 and far removed from DAI or SWTOR, but at least good combat mitigates that...something generally lacking from either.

Not really a fan of just the wandering around doing 'nothing' aimlessly. Nor a fan of pure hard core exploration games where exploration is the point. I am into BioWare games for deep story and deep character content. Not for just wandering around looking at the scenery.

That being said here are days when I do like to vedge too. Open World games, are good in games where you can have your cake and eat it too. You can go about and do deep menaingful quests to engage your brain. OR you can just run around looking at question marks and killing bandits. OR you can spend the day crafting. Sure its ofen not a switch, sometimes you can't just switch back and forth between them, but the options are still there. To essentially have a deep 'meat and potatoes' game or your ice cream in the same experience.

I pretty much agree with all that.  That game that will not be named aka the one people are sick of hearing about really delivered on the last paragraph.  I too play for the story, but on occasion do like to shut the brain down and roam or craft.  That said a game that requires doing that constantly becomes a grind all too fast.  Good story and awesome combat is all I need...exploration and crafting is just a nice side diversion.

This is probably the only thing that disappoints me about (what we know) MEA: not having a hub world that is an entire, Coruscant-esque city. Ilium missions are my favorite from any video game. Ever.

Will we be that kind of explorer? 

This is the precise reason why I hope they keep Inquisition's random enemy encounters. I want to get into a gun fight every time I decide to run out and roam. The bigger the waves, the better.

And if they drop prefab camps and equipment like Inquisition, I'd love that too.

Sometimes. I'm pretty sure we will primarily face sentry drones and technogical enemies in the vaults which is this game's equivalent to having tombs and ancient relics, and they've showed us that wildlife is a legit threat.

"Who else is just looking forward to roam around and have fun shooting things?"

Definitely not me, very much not me Kind of scares me the idea that something like that could be the thing that MEA do best Skyrim in space, something even worse that Inquistion in space... I mean, I love both Skyrim and DAI, but I feel like I need a "the horror" gif here in fact

I know that it will be the worst game ever, the worst game. Im only interested in the multiplayer, might try out the single player but only for the sake of closure as i already know it will be the worst game ever. Just waiting for that multiplayer.

The vast emptiness.

I mean it. While I wouldn't say that ME1 exploration was all that good -- really, all we had were a bunch of planets with Dillinaga writings and copy-paste warehouses/mines -- but the atmosphere of driving around alien landscapes was pretty nice.

Now that I think about it, I'm starting to understand a bit more why safe alien designs in ME:A bother me. I have a fear that this user-friendly mentality will pervade everything. Devs said that it's important for aliens to be able to emote (or some such) so that we can better understand and relate to them, which is why they seem to share human-like facial structures. That's all well and good, but there's something to be said about not being able to "get" an alien mind. This drive to humanize everything in the interest of understanding, if taken all the way, can severely undermine the otherness, "alien-ness" of strange lifeforms. And that's exploration too, confronting and trying to understand something so outside the spectrum of human experience. I don't need to see a human with rubber forehead to be intrigued as well as emotionally and intelectually invested.

I hope this mentality doesn't infect planet-building in the game as well. Nice Earth-like planets are welcome, but I also want to see awesome unsettling emptiness of worlds without atmosphere. I want planets caught in close orbit of massive binary stars that are unable to support life as we know it (as we know it being the important phrase here). I really wouldn't want to see ME:A dispense with all this in favor of more-or-less hospitable and familiar environments everywhere because "gameplay reasons". 

Going back to ME1, even main planets, except for Virmire, had this pronounced alien and/or threatening feel. Noveria, Feros, Therum... none of them were at the top of the Habitable Worlds list, that's for sure. It is this harshness of landscape that captured my imagination more than anything else. I'm gonna be royally pissed if ME:A consists of a steady diet of purple-colored Hinterlands and Storm Coasts. I hate pastoral landscapes in my exploration games.