For those who liked and didn't like MEA, do you think DAI was better?

I've yet to see a topic where TW3 isn't forced into somehow.

Because reasons. 

Of course DAI was the GOTY in 2014 and is a really good game. I wouldn't even compare it to mea.
I would compare it with DA2 since they both had troubled development cycles but still DA2 is also vastly superior to mea

It’s a fair question to ask, by and large I don’t think there is a huge gap between the two games, but the context behind them both play a big part in how they got received. DAI came out after a bit of a misstep in DAII, which wasn’t a bad game but most of the flaws are obvious. They fixed the issue of lack of scale and landscape diversity absolutely emphatically, they brought back the right characters from the previous two games (for the most part) to continue/finish their stories, they responded to calls to scrap plans on the human only MC, and gave a decent variance of race and background stories. They transition over to a completely new game engine which would in principal help in upping both the scale and graphical quality of their game.

The last two points in particular I think bought Bioware some goodwill ahead of time from most of the masses. I certainly cut them a break on some of the flaws within the game on the basis of using the new engine, and the trouble they had adapting it for an RPG during development. Again the flaws of DAI are pretty obvious to see, and they would have to be fixed for the next major release under the engine, which turned out to be MEA.

Now you need to consider the context MEA is coming out from. Regardless of your own personal thoughts of the ME3 ending, it’s a matter of great controversy and the next Mass Effect game to follow that would be under the microscope more than it usually would as a result of that. They had 5 years to develop the title, they had the experience of the engine the DAI team had to draw upon to help overcome some of issues, and they had a free pass to do pretty much anything they wanted narratively.

Despite all that, it would seem based on the reports we’ve seen that development of MEA was allowed to spiral on either rudderless or gambling on busted flushes (the procedural planet system). While they do eventually churn out something, a decision gets taken at some level to release the game in a clearly unpolished state, either arrogantly or ignorantly thinking they can sort it all out later and it’ll still sell good anyway with no harm done.

Even forgetting all that, there isn’t a lot MEA built upon what DAI introduced, a lot of the side quests involve a lot of faffing about, including long tedious travelling (with those unskippable cutscenes) and the matters as equally unbefitting for someone of the Pathfinder’s standing, though not as bad as some of the tasks in DAI. Still contained the horrid mapping and waypoint systems, interfaces for storage/crafting/upgrading still pretty rubbish, especially if you want to do more than one item at a time. Still the need for having to pick up materials as you navigate the planet maps, and the collection quests, which still left an MMO-light feeling to it. What MEA did improve upon was combat, which I quite enjoyed for the most part, most of the visuals were better despite the obvious flaws to some of course, slightly improved travel with the NOMAD which didn’t sacrifice party banter, the improved roaming about your squadmates do on the ship/nexus and the good amount more dialogue that was put in. Sure I didn’t like some of it, particularly the lack of difference in Ryder’s material, DAII seemed to handle that method of MC speaking better than MEA did.

So yeah, put side by side I’d rate these technically the same, but outside of that I’d give DAI a couple of points ahead of MEA. DAI was doing nearly all the venturing into new ground for the next gen material, and managed for the most part to pull it off successfully, albeit with plenty of points for improvement that MEA didn’t really take up on. If that was down to how the development cycle went down in the end, that certainly explains the reason, but cannot ever excuse it. We all at the end of the day shell out the same amount of money to buy it regardless, hopefully we won’t see a release like this from an EA title under Bioware again, and that a few DLC packs/patches can help mitigate some of the issues mentioned.

Faffing. If there is one word to sum up MEA it's faff. It took what I thought was fairly an enjoyable aspect of DAI (exploration) and made it more faffy instead of more integral.

But at the end of the day, TW3 is FAR better received than those games. You cannot deny this.

Faff is a word?

Heck yes it's a word. It means "ineffectual activity". As in "trying to change your steam password is a faff cause there are 5 steps of confirmation".

Reception does not equally quality. TW3 was mediocre in comparison to any Bioware title for what I wanted in a game.

Bioware and Projekt Red aren't trying to emulate each other. They're both just trying to make good RPG games. I think that's where any meaningful comparison ends. Constantly bringing up TW3 is starting to get really boring. Some people like it, some hate it, but it no longer brings anything new or interesting to the conversation. Talk about flogging a dead horse. This one is fully decomposed.