Did the success of Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars The Force Awakens affect Mass Effect Androm

That then falls on the person who hired Schlerf.  Obviously, someone at Bioware thought Schlerf was up to the task.  It still does not make Mac responsible for the writing of ME:A's story... as much as certain people here keep trying to suggest that he was.

In only 18 months (including a 3-month extension) with much of the VA work probably done or well in progress... I'm willing to bet he didn't get much of a chance to change all that much.  His job probably entailed more just juggling bits around to fit the fewer environments that were now being hand generated rather than the multitude of 100 or so procedurally generated that Bioware alluded to back then.  At any rate, it STILL does not make your original statement relevant or accurate because Bioware did hire someone before they announced that they were proceeding with ME:A... that's the bottom line.

There are those who might defend his actions in Halo 4, but the words for those people involves lots of screaming and repeated latin phrases

I pretty sure only really having a year and a half to delevop probably hurt MEA more then Rey or Starlord ever could.

There's nothing wrong with humor, but there's a time to it. The Citadel DLC, for example, is hilarious from beginning to end, because it's well applied and it's basically a fanservice DLC.

But in Andromeda, not only the jokes are terrible, but they are applied in wrong situations (almost the entire game). The only two times I laughed in Andromeda was the Star Wars reference during Liam's mission and the "movie night" where Ryder pretends to be sad because of the salarian's death (characters are so forgetable I can't remember his name. Kalo or something like that)

I'm inclined to agree.  I've seen previous work from several writers.  They had solid talent on the team.  (Vetra for example, was written by Cheryl Chee, creator of Leliana, Isabela and Blackwall for crying out loud!)  

Bloody hell, seriously? What happened? And don't give me the 18 month thing. This has to be a case of cut content.
Can't imagine the creator of three superbly realised characters could create such a one-note npc without interference from above. 'Less tension! Less character! More bland!'.

In some sense, it's about general idea of reviving nostalgia for a familiar space opera. What worries me is that Andromeda as an idea had more of a promise than force awakens, but I feel like it ended up being worse.

True that. Trying to be No Man's Sky and creating endless lifeless worlds definitely sounds like a waste of time and energy. 

Well JJ is one of the greatest creative minds out there right now.

Well:

Yah, the entire "feel good" atmosphere without telling you why you should feel anything for these characters.