Who exactly was this game aimed at?

this does not take into account the vast differences in the two modes. Though generally speaking i agree with the points you make. However having those modes tacked on does not seem to hurt the quality of the games...well it might've in ME 3s case.

At all? How'd you know the ending was something you wouldn't like before you saw it?

Same way I know the post EC endings, I suppose.

Youtube.

They're getting more similar though.

Pause and play is gone from SP, as is the power wheel.

Pretty early on. The shitstorm broke lose, just after I bought the game. Since I'm not the guy being bothered by spoilers, I had a look at videos without any comment showing the different endings. That's when I decided, I didn't want to and didn't look forward to my journey ending that way. I always quite when reaching the illusive man. Later on, when Citadel was released, I took that to be my ending and again later on, I had Mehem, which provided an entirely different ending.

Um... are we sure we want to do this again?

That's not the endings I have gotten. Mine were frigging epic. Shepard became an unknowable god in one, and has created a paradise in another through the sheer strength of her consciousness. I did not like the one where I destroyed the reapers and survived, lol.

That "without the means of survival" doesn't apply to everyone, of course. Asari, salarians, drell, hanar, and krogan can live on Earth without too much difficulty. Light gravity for elcor, but it doesn't seem likely to outright kill them. Volus might be in trouble since we don't know of any vol-like planets in the area, although we don't know for sure that there aren't any either. Same thing for dextro worlds to feed the turians, although if the quarians made it past Rannoch their liveships should be able to handle both populations with all the quarian civilians safe on Rannoch. And getting the quarians destroyed at Rannoch is under player control anyway, so that wouldn't count according to your principles.

For me, what I disliked about the ending was that Starbrat telling me that organic and synthetics will always end in conflict, no ifs, ands or buts. I'm not just going to accept that that is how it is just because someone says so. Especially not from someone whose 'solution' to the problem is to deliberately repeat the same cycle over and over, ensuring that it always ends in the same conflict he claims is inevitable. 
So I was a little mollified that they did add that 'refuse' ending, even if they did it in a somewhat spiteful way. I don't mind that Shepard dies in all the endings (I never got the breath ending, and didn't want it. I really felt that Shepard's sacrifice was necessary for the narrative). 

I am a little concerned that Andromeda seems to want to continue pushing the theme that conflict between synthetics and organics is always inevitable. I just hope that this time they have a way to demonstrate the inevitably of this conflict that isn't just some character insisting it is so.

With no meaningful way to demonstrate disbelief, disbelief isn't meaningful. So yes, the game is saying Shepard had to believe the Starbrat. 

I have no idea what you mean by that.