Bigger and more complex doesn't mean its better

The narrative hook they were going for, and the way it ties into the gameplay hook, actually works remarkably well in my opinion.

Ignoring the main Kett threat, you land on a planet, and now your quests are planet-specific. Doing those quests makes the planet more viable for your colonies, which is your job. From a gameplay hook - it's do quests, increase viabllity score, earn more viability points, spend viability points on perks designed to help you with crafting and combat, craft and improve your combat, and get stronger/more powerful.

That's quite a compelling hook, and one that works well.

THe problem with Andromeda is that it lacks a lot of polish and finesse that a game this large needs.

While the framework surrounding the game is good, everything else isn't. The quests are boring, the side characters are mostly forgettable, most of the planets feel laborious to explore, the crafting UI is god awful, etc.

So while I generally agree with what you are saying, I think Bigger and more complex can often mean better if it's done in the right way which prioritizes player entertainment and polish.

I'm so hopeless regarding BioWare's own perception of their games's quality (they think the ambient side-quests in ME3 were an improvement) I just almost don't wanna bother pointing it out anymore. There's just too much facepalmness in the way they make games.

All I can do is enjoy it for the parts i like like the story moments, character relationships and combat.

But overall yes, BioWare has derailed themselves trying to mimic what Ubisoft and others are doing. I also saw one of the writers speculate that "conflictless storytelling is good", and anytime I see an employee retweet something Alexander Freed has said I just... uuggh. Conflictless storytelling is pretty much what they're attempting in Inquisition and Andromeda. There are moments of conflict in between but no overarching one because the player is just metagaming and grinding to success and the "story" is their journey through the world they're helping to colonize or fix (in both DA:I and ME:A).

I noticed specifically in TotalBiscuit's "WTF is Mass Effect Andromeda" video that he praised the "story" by constantly refering to the Planet Viability and systems by refering to the game's "story". He kept saying "the story" in the most vaguest sense. It's a testament to how you cannot quite grasp the "story" in neither this nor Inquisition because it's too much of a framework as opposed to a plot. All the plot there is is the main crit-path questline and perhaps Ryder's companionship as a subplot to that, but they have yet to figure out how to tie an overarching plot, a story that goes from A to B with reason and DRAMATURGY into the metagame plot.

I really like the world building in Andromeda (although it's still really cookie-cutter at times) and I loved the world building in Mass Effect 1 too and Mass Effect 2 and Witcher 3, but unlike those games Inquisition and Andromeda just don't find a way to make the "story" of the primary gameplay more than a framework or backdrop. That's why it feels so lethargic-inducing and purposeless at times. Sure, seeing the physical locations that amount to the world of Mass Effect Andromeda and helping those places is a form of literary merit for a game-story, but it cannot replace the dramatic flow of a tightly prescripted plot and Andromeda severely needs a better plot within its narrative framework.

What I admired about Witcher 3, although it was far from perfect, was the way in which the game took you from area to area in the open-world via its particular plot. You're looking for a person because she's important personally to Geralt. You have dreams, conversations and magical visions along the journey and even omniscent flashbacks that reveal what this person has been doing to tie it all together, and the game uses this plotline as an excuse to throw the player into side-quest arcs tied to each area you're supposed to visit in your pursuit and you end up doing other side-quests in those areas becuase those stories compelling too. The drawback of Witcher 3's narrative design was how padded the main plot ended up feeling. "The princess is always in another castle" is a meme that is attributed to it, but as long as each pitstop in that search leads to other important subplots that compliment and expand upon why finding said person is important it works in the end. The important point to make here is that Witcher 3 had a good 3-act structure that spanned the entire open-world setting with appropriate highs and lows like a good story should

Inquisition had some interesting elements in its main plot especially thematically because it was about faith, but it was wrapped in a shallow mystery-plot and a farcical good vs evil hero plotline that just didn't work. It ended up feeling broken from a drama-standpoint.

And Andromeda which I haven't finished yet also seems to take this unfortunate route because the main plot jumps as it pleases. There's however a better point of no return in this game I think, but i can't be sure. I'll get back to that.

I'd just like to see BioWare create a game like Andromeda where the goal is more akin to ME1 where you're trying to stop a bad guy from doing a certain thing so you have to hunt him across 6 different planets. Each planet reveals a way in which he has tampered with the peace there so you can help restore that or skip past it and then have 3 encounters with the bad guy along the way or something and otherwise you'll find leads about his whereabouts or meet his subordinates. Instead Inquisition and Andromeda's main plots end up feeling like a side-step to everything else in the game which is wholly counter-intuitive IMO. I really like how the main areas lead you to the main plot in Andromeda but the main plot is still completely seperate to the focus of the game which is the planetary exploration and viability-grinding metagame.

They need to make their open-world concept feel less grindy and busywork-like. Any form of reducing narrative decisions or quest completions to a meter that fills up or a number system like EMS, Power or Viability... as gratifying as that progression can feel from a gameplay POV it is counterintuitive to making it a story.

I disagree with the posted graph for the DA:I drama. For me, the fall of Haven was followed by a continuous sinusoid of:

1. Level up for the Next Story Mission in an Area that has the most easy to travel Landscape. Boooring.
2. Embark on a Story Mission. Looks sort of cool... What do I supposed to do again?
3. Get a walkthrough and read what I am supposed to do.
4. Go through convoluted exploration sequence of a small area, get sort of a build up, then an anticlimactic... nothing. No battle, no boss. Adamantine took the cake with 3 out of 3 bosses not being killable by the Inquisitor in a battle. A Dragon flies away. You can't even take a swing at an evil wizard. A traitor Warden dies heroically all on her own. Even a big demon in that quest refuses to fight to the death, you just toss a human sacrifice to it. WTF.

One of the quests, I was so clueless that I just actually have just defeated a dungeon boss that I realized it only searching for loot and he was a "near death clickable".

There is bland, and then there is... Inquisition.

Andromeda tries to make the bosses into interesting people you can kill than just another mob and have locales that can qualify as an actual dungeon rather than a room.

Anyway, Andromeda did a far better job to appealing to my feeling charged with an important task and keeping me interested than inquisition

I also only plan to go exploring for something that is important for me, like the memories, and skip the crafting entirely.

I am equally at a loss for words for how much I hated both the Haven and the Skyhold, the way too large, door infested convoluted PoS you had to continuously walk around to get convos. Tempest ftw.

I think the game suffers only in the following areas:

1. It's required to wash the taste of Mass Effect 3 from everyone's mouth.

2. The Kett are weak villains.

3. The squadmates are okay but no one really leaps off the page.

4. A lot is rehashed from the previous games.

So, the game is good but not great.

Still, I don't get anyone's hate for it as it's better than most games out there.

I don't much appreciate it when a game tries too hard to enforce pacing.  I'm one of those role-players who wants a game to allow me to create my own narrative.

That bit with followers scattered all over the place started with DA2, and I really resented having to sit through lengthy load screens (PS3) just to have conversations with them, especially when they were in my party.  The reason for that, of course, is so that they could make oh-the-drama cinematic cutscenes - which I don't value.  (I actually prefer ambient conversations, because they feel like my character actually lives in that world instead of being some actor in a movie.)  But - a lot of people appreciate those cutscenes, so DAI upped the ante.  In DAI, you can stop to talk with a follower en route to somewhere else in that vast castle, and after the big hairy cutscene, you're dropped off... wherever.  Oh, goody!

DAI enforced pacing just enough to make it difficult for me to create a playthrough that feels well-paced.  MEA isn't doing that to me thus far - I have plenty of main story stuff to do, but the game isn't pushing urgency, so I feel that I have more freedom to pace it out as I see fit.

The thing though, I just don't do the side-quests that do not pick my curiosity, and I think that's the way it is designed, by giving you tons of choices on what to do to level up before following the next part of the main story. In Inquisition, I did not do five or six major areas and did just enough quests in areas that pleased me to get enough levels to advance the main story. I find it odd that people complain that they do quests they do not like UNLESS they cannot meet the level requirements without the infamous mob grinds. But so far I have not seen any leveling problems in Andromeda related to skipping side-show, and it had by far more narrated and interesting stories than Inquisition.

So, I will reserve the judgment for now. If later in the story I find myself having to scour the surface of Eos for more outposts to establish and more ketts to kill because I am underleveld and is one-shotted in the next story mission, well, then, I will eat my words.

I agree, but truth be told this game is not that complex.

What is complex is the narrative choices for a lot of individual quest lines. They give it weight and nuance.

What is not is the overall narrative arc. That...however...I have a feeling is going to go places soon.

I am not sure if this isn't a misconception of the marketing departments. ME1 and especially 2/3 also were 30-40 hours at best (if you spend a lot of time reading the codex and GM and stuff) and the community was fine with it.
As long as they don't just cut content but replace it with higher quality content (but less quantity of course, e.g. cut 5 fetch quest and implement 1 proper quest instead), and playthruoghs now take an average of 40 hours or so, I doubt people would complain (not en mass anyway, there will always be a few).

Before DA:I and now ME:A BW was never really known for making super long games, just really good ones. I'd like them to realize their strength there again.

Many people 100% the game. 

You also need to do them to 100% most of the planets viability score

The Exalted Place. Was trying to go North forever. Walk through? Apparently need to do something to unlock an Operation... forgetit.
The Winter Palace. OMG, climbed that trellis and jumped back because approval rating was dropping like a stone about seven times, the Journal tells you to search the Library or something. On the verge of tears, find a walkthrough. Apparently you need to find a halla statue waaaay out of the way to go unlock some door to progress the plot.
I kept fighting the two parties in the hinterlands while running around till I looked up in the Walkthrough where their "strongholds" were. Not that the battles there were any better than in the general area.
The Hissing Wastes (or whatever) where you needed to go find an Orlesian scientist to unlock a quest for a keep in that area, and then start doing an unremarkable quest chain to clear out maybe three operations that got you North... I am not sure why, but Inquisition was apparently really hard on the going North impulses.

And all those infuriatingly vague Journal and "hint" entries... "this door cannot be open w/o a special mechanism" "locked from inside" "search the area for clues" made me so happy my blood pressure is good. because otherwise, I'd be hospitalized.

Honest to god, any time I was stomped, on any map, I searched the Internet, and I always ended up finding a post starting: "Please, HELP! I was running around for 2 hours trying to find X... I feel like killing someone I am so MAD!" and the response starting with: "Well, it is a little tricky... First you need to go to over there and to do this, then..."

Gods, I can't describe how much I hated the areas in that game. I was literally so excited when I saw I had enough levels to get on the straight and narrow after Adamantine and don't have to do all those Emprise du Lion, Forbidden Osasis etc.

IIRC, I got to 100% viability on 2 planets now quite a while before finishing all the quests there. So it shouldn't be a problem.