IF we get another Mass Effect game....

5-10 years would be enough.

Alec was the villain? Seriously?! Ok well if another game is made we'll enjoy it and you can play something else. Maybe LeisureSuit Larry is your cup of tea?

I say 5-10 year pause, then hard reboot of the entire IP

I think I would want it to be something more like 100-200 years -- enough time for mythology about the "Pathfinders"/Ryder and all that to develop, as well as major hubs, species conflicts, etc. That's partly why I want (the likely dead) SP DLC to tie up major issues like the quarian ark and the Benefactor situation; I want to start the game in a thriving world with lots more to discover and explore not just geographically but "culturally" and biologically.

No one from MEA is alive except for maybe a few members of the longer-living species. Maybe the Kett are still a problem, but not the problem because they've been successfully held back by coalition forces; they're more like the cockroaches of the cluster than anything. Instead the main plot revolves around the Scourge/Jaardan/Remnant relationships; maybe something dormant and threatening is waking up and everyone is freaking out.

Also that would give them enough time to develop some means of FTL travel so they could reach other clusters (100-200 years is maybe enough time to suspend disbelief that they could have discovered or developed a means of doing this, or that another race has come from another cluster by those means and taught the tech to them), and the game can feel more expansive because they could introduce a few more races from elsewhere.

Depending on where the other plot threads lead, it could pick up immediately after MEA ended.  Maybe 6-12 months to allow time for the dust to settle, the Nexus construction to complete, the inhabitants of the other cryo pods to be awakened and start populating the Nexus and the outposts.  The Eos outpost could grow to the point of annexing the original failed outposts there.

Regardless of the Quarian Ark status, there's still the scourge, the whole remnant backstory, the Jaardan backstory, the mysteries around the benefactor, and even though the Archon is finished in the cluster, Primus is still out there with an agenda, along with other contingents of kett that exist elsewhere.

I'd like to see Ryder & crew continue what they started.

+1, I would hope to see Ryder and co again. MEA finished (at least in my completionist run) with the team being tight and unified, so I'd like to see that same group take on new challenges and see through this whole thing with the Jaardan and potentially whether if the Reaper threat from the MW might have followed the AI to Heleus. Moving onto a new crew/main character would be like the next film after the Star Trek reboot having a completely new set of characters.

For one thing, I could easily see a situation that the Quarian Ark launched too late and acted as trail for the Reapers. That would certainly explain why the Quarian pilot was so adamant that the rest of the AI not go looking for them.

I'm not sure about Primus, though. The Archon was mainly a threat because he was so delusional rather than any strategy or tactics on his part. Primus struck me as basically the Archon but with just basic Kett tech and no ability to think outside the box. 

That would be really smart and make a lot of sense, but how would they Make It New in that case? I would worry that they would retread too much old ground there, even though I realy like the idea in theory.

Even though I am not very impressed with Andromeda, I believe they need to finish the story. I also believe that should they choose to do so, they seriously need to take the gloves off and do some way better writing and character development. I was not very keen on the whole Andromeda arc to begin with, and even less so after the game was released, but they need to step up and finish the story.

It would be nice if they make a DLC to finish the story but i am not sure if there is one.

Well, I don't mean everything must be new. Just that I wouldn't want to see too much of the same, or roughly the same arc play out. A Jaardan-Reaper war could be interesting. Or maybe they could do a psych-out: the Reaper arrives and everyone is like Holy shit! Oh no! And then some unknown new enemy more powerful than the Reapers comes out the woodwork to destroy the Reaper and we have to deal with them.

Or continue with Andromeda? That's the only way forward. Nothing is ever achieved by going backwards. And canonization of an ending would be suicide.

1. Major butthurt? Wut?

2. Pic isn't showing for me. All I'm seeing is a placeholder.