What if ME:A was called ANDROMEDA: A MASS EFFECT STORY? Would that have helped expectations?

I don't have a cursor in every cutscene ... I suggest you verify your installation of the game (in case you have it installed and your opinion is not given by some saint youtube videos)

I don't think you could call a bug an opinion, opinions have to do with how much a given bug bothers someone. But what does verifying installation mean? Something to do with Origin?

Forget it. That certainly doesn't solve the issue at hand.

I had that cursor also. For me it happened when I minimized the game to check something and used alt enter to get back to full screen, after being done on the desktop.

It doesn't matter if something cost a dollar, I'm going to decide if it was worth what I paid for it.  But the point I was really making was that I don't take outside factors into consideration when deciding this.  Some people will say well considering the rocky development I think it came out pretty good, or like with DA2 people said I think it's fine for a game that only had 18 months development.  None of that matters, either its worth what I paid for it or not.

As far as DA2, I had some of the same problems with it as I had with ME:A.  There was too much stuff that just came across half-assed and unfinished.  We don't feel like creating a good encounter mechanic so we'll just have the enemies drop out of the sky, or out of ceilings.  We're going to keep the player in one city all game, but we're not going to bother to make a bustling, interactive city, we'll just make it empty and lifeless all game.  Then when the player does leave we'll send them to the same three areas over and over again. 

I'm not even going to rehash all of the things that seemed rushed and half-assed with Andromeda, not even counting not liking the story, characters or protagonist.  So the product in both cases was sub par to me and not worth what I paid for them.

I thought the relationships you could have with your companions were better because of the whole rivalry system.  Wasn't all buddy buddy like ME:A.  But aside from act 2, with the Qunari, I thought the story was terrible.  They said the game covered ten years of your life but you didn't really get to experience much.

Instead of doing random quests to raise money in the first act, I would have had the player live out the part of their life where they make a name for themselves as a smuggler or whatever the other path was.  Then you could have met Varric during this, and actually proved yourself to him, developed some sort of relationship, and at the end he invites you on the expedition.  This would have been far better than him just walking up out of nowhere and saying I heard about you, raise some money doing random quests to come along with me.  He could have seen how you and your family were living, and as a friend offered you a way to make a better life.  Would have also given two different origins because of the two different professions you could pick.

The gave you a family but never made them one.  They were only there to kill off to make it dark fantasy.  You're brother could be a templar, and your sister could have been in the circle, but you could never visit or talk to them.  Circle/Mage conflict was central, why not let the player talk to their sibling from time to time to see how they were living.  If your sister was being abused in the circle it may have gone a long way towards your decision in picking a side at the end.  You may have agreed with Andres and said let's burn this B**** down.

I could go on, but this was another similarity between DA:2 and MEA, they took from the player things that could have made the game more personal, that were right there already in the game.  You didn't get to be pathfinder as far as being the first on the ground, making the first contacts, picking where colonies went, or doing quests that changed the colony over the course of the game. it was mostly done when you got there. In DA:2, they told you more of the important parts of your ten year story then they let you play through.

The games remind me so much of each other.

But if you're using a salarian pilot, asari, turian and krogan, people will still say Mass Effect, even if it was called Shepard's pie. And that aside. Weak sauce is weak sauce, regardless of names.

And if you make a fps and name it "Call of Duty" people will buy it.

Call of Duty: Ghosts, got scores comparable to MEA's, is considered the weakest CoD game to date, and still sold 20 million copies

And I'm not arguing that a name change would magically make something "good"  I'm saying a name change would have meant less backlash because the mediocrity of MEA would then not reflect on the Mass Effect franchise as a whole.

I think that story vs gameplay is a strange argument. Imo both are integral and the gameplay should feel authentic and keep you with the story, make you feel one with your character & belong in the verse. Ignoring it, or adding a lot of artificial markers that reminds you that you are playing a game is not great. In the old games, with unintuitive gameplay with turns and obvious rolls of dice it is that much harder to stay invested. In the newer games, the same effect is achieved by adding crafting and similar add-on mechanics.

The good story is also something rather hard to define. Expecting millions of people from all walks of life to resonate with something, to push everyone's buttons leaves very small choice of subject matter or protagonists. What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba? makes or breaks any work of fiction. Sometimes BioWARE manages it, sometimes they do not in their games. That's to be expected.

I think I dealt with it for the first time when I played IWD games versus BG games. I liked the settings, artwork and plots of the IWD games actually more than the BG games, and lots and lots of players came forward saying how they want to create their own party. But the companion-based BG games with its grandiose protagonist was what secured a place of honored classic for BG games, while the IWD's band of adventurers did not work the same magic.

Any creative venture is a risk, and in case of videogames, a huge financial risk, and countless hours of toil. And as audience we expect, no matter what, when we buy something for entertainment purposes to wildly entertain us. It's hard to get it why one thing entertain someone else, but falls flat for you and vice versa. We are not telepathic species, and we diverged a lot over the last couple of centuries. Plenty fiction dwells on our alienation and misunderstanding of one another.

I can only wish that the next videogame that comes along will have its Hecuba that makes millions care. I feel unhappy that the future of my entertainment is a hostage to the amalgamated tastes of millions, rather than a couple-three hundred thousands like in the past, but what can you do.

So you say story is important for franchies loyalty? I beg to differ. Look at Xcom I'm fairly sure most people are playing for game play not story. Darkest dungeon I could see story compelling you to play but the tactics once again are what attract people. This also applies to another genre I love stealth games. I play those for the challenge and the diversity of level design. Am I buying Dishonored: Death of the Outsider for story? nope! Did assassins creed get stale because of story? nope. Major complaints are usally leveled at ubisofts copy pasted world design and gameplay. FPS as a whole doesn't much care about story either. I even take breaks from the Witcher 3 to play gwent because the combat is so brain dead boring. I have issues playing DA:I for the same reason as well. Gameplay is very important if I just wanted story I'd play dating sims and choose your adventure "games". I could keep going but I'd rather not write an essay. Point in case is that games need multiple things to be good/bad, not just story. I get that you view story as important but if you don't view things objectively and try to critic a game you make yourself look foolish. 

Note: I'm not saying story is fine in MEA, in fact I think its the worse in all of the bioware games that I've played (swtor excluded).

Hecuba?