If you could remove a plot element/character from MEA what would it be, and what would you replace i

Hard to decide between the Kett and SAM.

After revisting the game multiple times with different party setups on every location/mission, here is my updated opinion.

Ryder - He's not actually THAT bad, certainly more personality than Shep  and better than Sole from Fallout 4, he deserves another shot.

Drack - Keep, he's as good as Wrex

Peebee - She's decent, but her loyalty mission rubbed me the wrong way. An apology via email is not enough to make up for risking other people's lives. If she returns she's gonna have to do a lot of maturing. Her whole loyalty mission in general was poorly written and inconsistent. You can launch a grown man several feet in the air but can't gravity a small device lol.

Liam - Sometimes I think he's alright, other times he just plain sucks. Does dumb shit, says dumb shit. He really has no place on the team, doesn't really offer anything and could be replaced by any random character. I can't even bang em, he's useless. I'll say for a sequel? please for the love of god give this character to someone else to write. Dude who wrote Kaidan, should not be writing squadmates ffs.

Vetra - Keep, she's not Garrus, but she's decent enough.

Jaal - Keep, give him a better writer though so he doesn't seem like his personality is shifting back and forth between Javik and Garrus.

Cora - Like Liam, she needs a better writer. I don't want her talking my ear off in Andromeda 2 about her huntress manuals. Bioware, you can make a human interesting without giving alien culture to them. ME2 did it just fine, except for Jacob.

Gil - Remove him from the premises.

Suvi - Meh

Kallo - Meh

Kett - They're boring, ditch em.

Sam - Give him a mute button ffs. One of my biggest gripes in Andromeda is him talking every time I drive in shade. He tends to cut off story relevant and companion dialogue. We have a big ass notification in the middle of the screen telling us the temperature we're in. We don't need him saying it every damn time.

Would remove Andromeda. Set it in The Milky Way, after ME3. Colonize and rebuild, without Mass Relays.

Voted Ryder. Replace Ryder with Doomslayer and rip and tear shit up! (oh, and add a Glory Kill where you rip the Archon's spine out of his ass).

I'd remove open world. I hate grinding the endless horizon looking for things to do. Just give me a good seamless stream of plot to keep me going like in the original Mass Effects. Sucks having just four or five core missions with the rest of the game just wandering planets with filler fetch quests. The completionist in me forces me to do all the nitty gritty fetch quests too, so it's such a bore and feels like a chore.

Or, just remove the Andromeda galaxy and replace it with the Milky Way.

Lol?!? That was not at all what I was implying. That would be too similar to 
.

Ain't got time fo dat

You can't just tell players that something is a threat, but have the actual portrayal be something completely different.   They failed in gameplay and in story portrayal.

Look at the other ME games.

ME:1 - Saren was a step ahead of Shepard all game.  Tried to blow up Eden Prime, killed a Spectre and then came back and bold faced lied to the council when you tried to call him on it.  Then by the time you got the evidence, he had escaped.  He was first to get the cipher, first to to get to Ilos and go through the conduit and succeeded in droping the CItadel defenses.  Even after the boss fight on Virmire, he grabs you by the neck and tosses you up like a ragdoll.  Additionally from Virmire on, Sovereign establishes the reapers as a huge threat to the point where you're not even thinking about defeating them, you're trying to keep them from reaching the MW at all.

ME:2 - See comments from my previous post about the collectors.

ME:3 - Reapers come in during the prologue and set the tone for the entire game.  Then every time you talk to Anderson or Garrus they may talk about small victories here and there, and how they're hanging in, but they both always end up saying there's no chance of winning like this.  Then you have Thessia and the other story missions, one of which where is took an Armada to bring down one reaper.

Now ME:A - Nothing.  Nothing in how they were portrayed during the game lead you to believe they were anything to be taken seriously.  And the saddest part is how easily this could have been remedied.

- If your father had to die, why not have him die securing your escape on Habitat 7 as the Kett proved too formidable?  If the Kett killed your father, it would have been like the Cousland origin in DA:O, where I was looking for Arl Howe all game.  It wouldn't even have changed the story much.  If the Turian could get the SAM implant from the SAM node, then so could Ryder.  Just make it so that Alec rigged it so that only one of his kids could access it.  Everything works out exactly the same.

- Have the Angarans take Ryder to a planet farther into the cluster where the Kett are fully in control.  Where you can see their dominance, brutality, cruelty, and see what could happen if the Kett get full control of the Helius Cluster.  Show me what I'm dealing with. 

- Have conversations with Kett commanders about how things are going in different parts of the cluster, where they're losing ground and planets to the Kett.

Give the player something.  The Kadera story line really just destroyed what ever little respect I had at the time after learning they killed the first colonists on Eos.  No way anything like that should have even been remotely possible.

HMMM What to remove....
Well that is obvious:
The Dyson Sphere obscenity: Meridian.
Should have kept it an artificial world just not an inverted sphere!
This is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A HALO RIPOFF -but that is what we got.

Yeah.
At least Star Trek used Dyson Spheres right and not inverted!

Unless you count Star Trek Online then not to my knowledge.

Not that...
There is no real star in the Meridian Dyson Sphere.
It is nothing more than glorified lamp post(S).
Or didn't you see that the top of those tall towers that go out of frame on Meridian is where the light was emanating from not a central star?
Though I will give the Jardaan credit to create such powerful lamp posts but still....
That is what I meant by inverted not a real Dyson Sphere without a real star.

Want creepy?
Listen to the ACTUAL SOUND of the planets:


Jupiter starts at about 3:30.
Saturn (6:10) though always beats all... creepiest that is... almost makes me think:
How do we know there is not intelligent life watching us from Saturn???