No wonder Andromeda sucks. Because the game formula they copied, The Witcher 3, sucks!

Well, W3 saga fell down in price on Steam to the price point that I said I'd buy it for before I saw all those in-depth discussions of the beast. It's like a couple bucks for the first game, 4$ for the second, and 35$ for the third in GOTY package. So, yeah, dunno. It's like an infomercial on late night TV. Don't need it, but it's cheap.

My point is that it is nearly impossible to actually play the game without doing some "looting"... and it is defined as "loot" by the developer.  Looting is important in this game... every bit as important as picking up ammo is in ME2 or ME3.  It's actually the same thing.  Sure, you can conceivably play the game without usuing any ammo and, therefore, you don't ever need to pick up any ammo... but do people consider that when they're griping about the ammo system in ME3... nooooooo.  Also, in ME3, any "quest" items are clearly labeled... in fact, every item you pick up, be it upgrade or quest item (e.g. dog tags) is clearly labeled the moment you activate the item... You don't have to take any items you don't want to take.  Same is true for TW3... but you do have to open a "loot" chest to determine if it has the alcohol, food, or crafting materials you might need so desperately... and your quest item chests are red... but they are also labeled as "loot."  They could have labeled more of them as "examine" or "gather item" or some other descriptor.

My point was that way too many quests in MEA are still really boring drive to X, then drive to Y than to Z quests where literally nothing happens in between. I appreciate that there are different categories, so the most empty scan mineral tasks and such are clearly labeled. But then I expected the other "real" side quests to actually be fun to do. But they are not most of the time. There is nothing interesting to see and do in Bioware open world environments. They are stale and devoid of life outside the settlements save for spawning enemies by these ridiculous drop ships. They look pretty. But that's it. And MEA is not nearly as pretty/diverse as DAI, so it's not even worth driving around for the view. Seen one spot, seen it all.
I'm doing quest after quest hoping to enjoy them the way I enjoy them in many other games. But way too many fall flat. And that's a damn shame when you're not even doing the fetch quests labeled as such.

I never said W3 didn't have fetch quests or repetitive elements. The vast majority of quests were quite diverse though imo. So if one is fairly short and bland, I can forgive that. I didn't feel like I need a better idea of what kind of quest it will be because they were mostly well done regardless of how long they were. In MEA I wish somebody told me which ones are actually well done so I can skip all the boring stuff. The Task category is insufficient. I still feel like I'm wasting my time.

See, the MEA quest design sounds good on paper. Like so many of their ideas. On Eos, I first thought it was a really cool idea to have quests unlock after a time. Gives the player the illusion of growth and change. I can also see how locking content until something significant happens makes sense for certain quests. W3 has a nice somewhat dynamic quest design. Depending on which order you do them or certain parts of them, you get different results sometimes. New options to resolve an issue. Some quests need others to be completed before they unlock. I really enjoyed that in W3. It was implemented well.
MEA is a complete mess because the implementation is so infuriating and the presentation lacking. It's ok to put a quest on old ONCE for something to unfold first, not ten or twenty times. It's ok to have some weak fetch quests, not half of the game. It's ok to scan some things, not scan everything.

If you focus only on the main quests and political side story in W3 you still get one hell of a cool game. If you focus only on the main story in MEA you get very little content. The side quests are supposed to be immersive and some of them DO add to the feel of each planet. But way too many involve just driving around with maybe a line or two afterwards.
MEA has serious implementation issues on top of the writing. On paper there might not be that big of a difference between W3 and MEA in the different types of quests there are. It's the presentation and flow of the quests that are very different from one another.

I agree that games that focus on narrative do not really benefit from open world. And I want Bioware to ditch it. Failed experiment. I love W3 but I prefer linear cinematic narratives. The trilogy was perfect for my taste. W3 has certain pacing issues. Especially the beginning is slow and confusing. I DID get confused which quest would actually progress the main story. I was underleveled for everything the first ten hours or so. W3's questlog is not the most intuitive, I give you that. But the ope world was implemented quite beautifully. The world felt alive and immersive. It added to the atmosphere of the story imo. MEA TRIES to be more alive than DAI was, and in that it is partially successful. But DAI was overall a much better game to me. And while I can see how W3 is way too long for some people, I spent over 200h with it, it's perhaps the best game I've ever played. The trilogy is the gaming love of my life, warts and all. That will never change. But W3 is "objectively" better made. I know thats' debatable. But it's how I see it.

Truthfully, any bug experiences I had were so irrelevant or infrequent that I don't remember them, and I've put more than 400 hours into TW3.

In regards to bugs and or glitches relating to the Withcer 3: Wild Hunt I only ever ran into one on a semi-frequent basis and by that I mean maybe once or twice per play session that ranged from three to ten hours and that is the dive button not working and that was resolved by a quick save and reload which was only bothersome before the end of the game's base story because of the pre load screen story recaps, afterwards it was a minuscule ten second delay in gameplay. Comparing that to the overwhelming number of bugs and glitches present in any unmodded Bethesda game and Bioware's most recent offering; Mass Effect: Andromeda I was and am able to readily forgive that.

There was also an issue where a vendor related to a quest would not interact with me yet that too was fixed by a quick save and reload cycle, problem solved. After 170 hours in the game and it's DLC those are the only two that comes to mind. I will also mention that during a dialogue scene I would on occasion spy an NPC in the background having some collision issue with the environment or in the case of the tournament in the second DLC the bow bugging out on some character's back but I can maybe recall three instances readily and they were hardly uncanny valley worthy scenarios. 

I don't doubt you for a second Redux. One bug I encountered which I failed to mention is the one where Ciri becomes cloned in a cut-scene. In any case, given that I played the game for something approaching 200 hours, I found it to be remarkably robust.

Again, my point is not to say that TW3 was overtly buggy at release... my point is that 2 years later, the bugs still exist in the game.  CDPR really isn't any "better" in that area than other developer companies.  In this day and age, they release games with bugs, they fix the worst of them for a period of time but they all leave bugs that never do get fixed... and the player is left using workarounds.  In the case of TW3, that workaround is often a save and reload... but that triggers the little reload blurb and takes time and it makes the game less enjoyable to play.  CDPR fans "forgive" this, brush it off... when mentioned here, it typically gets 1) responses saying "I didn't experience any bugs" or "They were so minor, I don't see them as a problem."  Bioware, on the other hands, gets annihilated on every front... I've even seen a "complaint" on these boaards about them having patched the game and not patched every single bug fans have been listing... and we're only, what, a little over 2 months after the game was released.

ME:A was not "remardably robust" at release... but it has been steadily improved upon since release.  Bioware deserves some credit for that... they're working hard to patch it and doing a good job of it even though they are working under all the stress of having a such overtly hostile "fan" base.  Some of the bugs they've been ripped apart for do exist in TW3 and others seem somewhat inherent in the release of open-world games.

When are the fans going to stop treating Bioware with such overt and ridiculous maliciousness?  The ME3 endings weren't great... but they weren't all THAT bad either... and they certainly do not warrant the 5 years of this shit that Bioware has been receiving.

There are always going to be people who complain and hold grudges against companies for their past decisions or issues with current games.

However, I would still argue it's disingenuous to suggest Bioware is simply the victim of bias or overt and ridiculous maliciousness.  What if the answer is this: overall, people haven't been as impressed with Bioware's most recent title(s) as they've been with titles in the same genre or time frame?

The proof is in the critic reviews, fan reviews and sales.  I can respect and understand each and every person who doesn't like TW3 and had problems with TW3, but I don't believe that changes the facts.

I think when it comes to bugs, many will give them a pass if they're not game breaking or if the product as a whole is so good they'll be willing to overlook them. I'm of the latter as I'm very tolerant of bugs, however I don't recall falling through geometry or seeing duplicate characters in TW3. Andromeda is far from the buggiest p.o.s I've ever played, but it is the buggiest bioware game I've played to date. 

In Andromedas case: it wasn't received nearly as well as TW3, so I could see bugs not be given a pass as much.

That's really good point - I agree that probably plays a factor, as well.

If I may attempt to bolster your spirits, I wouldn't be too worried that your gaming preference is destined for the history books.  I believe the new Mass Effect series (if it continues) has incredible potential to captivate audiences, even those who were used to the style of the original ME trilogy.

But, it all comes down to execution.  ME:A tried to take a different approach to the universe and (in my opinion) didn't execute it very well.  They have a lot of room for improvement.

Absolutely...same dev, same engine, they absolutely mirror each other

Camps and Forward Stations, AVP and Inquisition Points, Crafting Blueprints and Resource and Development, etc

I think there are things that ME:A did better than DA:I in terms of some of these similarities