Did Andromeda's side-quests live up to your expectations?

Then... you should be able to list 198 side quests from ME:A that are just "boring, tedious, fetch quests."  I honestly don't know how the poster who made that statement feels about TW3 and I'm sure they probably do own their copy of ME:A (and I would love to see far less hostility on these boards overall); however, the statement of the side quests in ME:A being 99% fetch quests is a blatant exaggeration/lie and, therefore, is not valid, period.

I did agree with an earlier poster who merely said there were too many fetch quests, because there were a lot among the 60 Additional Tasks listed in the journal... but even among those Additional Tasks, there were quite a number that were far more elaborate and involved than the term "fetch" quest implies.  Many of the remaining 141 side quests I listed were very involved, some as elaborate as the game's main missions.

And even the not so elaborate ones sometimes punched a certain amount of emotional wight.  Sleeping Dragons is only about 10 minutes long, but man its probably the best 'side quest' in a BioWare game...ever. 

I agree... one thing, I think, Bioware did improve on was how some of their "Additional Task" level quests connected to the main story and to each other so that the little bits and pieces could build into something more meaningful.  It's something taken right from TW3.  The open world did/can diminish some of these in both games, depending on the order the player acquires them; but the overall idea is, IMO, actually executed a little better in ME:A than TW3.  (I do realize there are a lot of people bound to disagree with me on that)... but anyway, getting back to ME:A.... Still, IMO, Bioware would have done better to just eliminate about 1/2 the additional tasks.  The first to go, IMO, would be the ones that asked the player just to scan a certain number of rocks, plants, wildlife and enemies.  I would leave in Naming the Dead, though, which leads through to Doesn't Add Up... both of which can add a lot of impact towards understanding what went wrong at Sites 1 and 2.

I don't expect Pulitzer material from any game story. But the companions in MEA didn't live up to previous games. Personally I feel it should be obvious to anyone having played all 4 games, but obviously that's down to tastes.

MEA has about the same number of companions ME1 had, but I feel like only Kaidan was a douche. I always left him on Virmire.

I did not argue about the fact that its hard to find the real physical collectors because they are hidden, what I am saying is its a bad decision that only 3 mission is actually against fighting reapers (fighting collectors is the same because are their foot soldiers). It could have been interesting if they had some kind of indoctrinated agents all over the galaxy that are not only trying to hide collector activites but actually sabotage any defense from the milky way races before the arrival of their masters, so we had to kill them before the reapers comes because when they will be in the milky way, we would need to be at full force. They were so many possibilities to advance the main plot in this instalments that could have been something else than fighting collectors on foot face to face. This is not only about them, its the fact that the main story was not advancing.

And YES it fucking matters that the suicide mission does not advance one bit in the end, oh My god it does. When they hyped us one year before launch how important this mission is how we are suppose to prepare all of the freaking game for doing this mission and in the end its just a sabotage mission. The game itself was great but the main plot was a fucking massive dissapointments because it brought barely anything, when I fnished it I was thinking"OK it was fun but why did we waited 3 years for barely any advancements in the main plot? Why was that suicide mission important?". I had to wait 2 more years to finally get the sequel to the plot with mass effect 3,

And I never said that the collectors would attack earth by themselves, I am saying the reaper would have attacked it anyway and would have made a human reaper no matter what we did. All we did by destroying the human reapers was to delay his creation, the other reapers would have still needed to came on earth to finish the job and get enough human to create one of their own, instead of using more colonist they are just using used more humans on earths. 

Actually the operation makes so little difference in the wars to come that its arguably not a great decision to attack the collectors in their base. Because its destruction would barely inconvenience the reapers, BUT doing this mission is at the risk of losing powerful companion that will be very important for the war to come. The benefits of suceeding brings nearly nothing, but what we have to risk to suceed, that is valuable. The collector base is an outpost and nothing more for the invaders.

And NO It would not have been dull, not one bit if it was about saving the galaxy again. Does the lord of the the ring trilogy is dull because each installement is always about saving middle earth from Sauron and his servants? no its not. All of the 3 instalments brings something to the main plots. Not something mass effect 2 did, ME 2 would have been good as an expansion not as a seuqle No full fledge game should be an episode 1.5 unless there was something bigger in it.

No, MEA side-quests were mostly pretty awful

Y'all ME2 is the best, stop shitting on it.
All of it is basically perfect. Except for the drink animation in my avatar, which is maybe still perfect in its own way.

Is that what that is? I thought she was putting eye drops in here eyes.  

Excluding tasks, MEA had the largest amount of side quests, and honestly most of them were pretty good.

The game is much better when you skip tasks and map exploration.

All in all I felt a lot of the sidequests were fun and thematically appropriate. The issues I have with MEA's sidequests aren't usually with the quests themselves, but their presentation and delivery.

The 'Soft' conversation camera

I wasn't a big fan of this in Dragon Age, and I'm not a fan of it here. By introducing two conversation formats, the cinematic style we're used to from ME, and the 'soft' camera, developers are essentially dividing all conversations in two: those important enough that we require a close up camera to show emotions and expressions, and those that aren't. By attaching these different conversation mechanics to different quests, they thereby divide quests into 'important, character driven' quests, and 'extra' quests. Some of the more interesting sidequests in the game only have the 'soft' camera. However good it might be, it's been immediately relegated and de-personalised by the developers for time/budgetary reasons.


Backtracking

I'm a bit of a completionist, but I still enjoy meaningful backtracking. There's something nice about returning to a quest giver and seeing their reaction as opposed to just hearing them over a radio. I also love going back to a previous area to see how it's changed, even if it's a simple aesthetic one. However, as efficient and ergonomic as I tried to be with MEA's sidequests, I still ended up going back to Eos around 15 times. At that point, it doesn't matter how amazing the quest is, going back to Eos again really wears on me.


Busywork

This is a bit more of a personal thing and I understand why people would disagree with me, but I'd always prefer the 'less is more' approach. I'll generally prefer one map with a couple of really good sidequests to the map with five good quests, 10 acceptable ones, 15 mediocre and 20 fetch quests. The more icons you put onto my map, the less it feels like a region to explore and more like a theme park or museum where I have to work out the most efficient route to hit every major attraction.