New Game+ or just a new Game.

I've done all 14 of my runs as a new game. One for each Ryder in each of the seven character classes. I've learned to be careful in the beginning, because the guns do suck, especially on insanity. It's always a relief when the Nomad gets upgraded and can successfully climb over an ant hill.

While I did try out the favorites, for the most part, I didn't use them, just treated each Ryder like they were a certain class, without the option to go other directions. For some classes, that meant I had the relevant passives and three powers maxed by level 53 (same time you max your squadmates), for others, I didn't get the passives and three powers maxed until level 58.

My runs were completionist runs, so with the exception of the first two runs, where I was pretty inefficient, I ended up with mid 60s level Ryders. The first two ended up in the low 70s.

I did NG+ with all my ME runs, to get Shepard to level 60 for the import to ME2.  After ME, I was pretty tired of NG+ … Shepard was too OP, even on hardcore … and insanity was just plain tedious … not a challenge, just tedious. I don't remember if there was a similar achievement for ME2. If not, then I would not have done an NG+ with ME2.  I did one NG+ in ME3 for the achievement.

The downside to no NG+ runs in MEA? I never got to a level X weapon, armor or mods in SP. But other than the one run to get the achievement in ME3, I never got past level V on my weapons in ME3. I survived.

tl;dr: I'm not a fan of NG+, I'd just go with a new run.

I do both. Although I do save up the Apex rewards while I'm doing a NG+, so when I start a fresh character s/he will atleast have some presents to unpack when s/he reaches the Nexus.

NG+ just makes an already easy game even easier on Insanity. Everything melts in a matter of seconds. ME2's ng+ felt a lot better in that regard.

Gimping yourself is not a substitute for a poor difficulty design. But having said that, for my setup you only need the bare minimum of skill points to unlock your preferred skills to kill in seconds. I based my skills around weapon damage.

Turbocharge
Charge
Tactical Cloak or Energy Drain

Valkyrie with Auto Fire, Bio Converter and Kinetic Coils

Mix of Maverick and Kett armor

Yeah I don't use  new game plus either  normally. I'm only just thinking of doing it for my next run to try some of the higher level stuff. Normally I prefer to just build characters from scratch. The only time I kind of have a character kind of built up is when carrying a Shepard from ME2 into ME3 tbh. I don' t use NG+ at all

I am not contradicting myself.  The design is fine.  It's flexible.  Flexible is superior to inflexible.  They nerfed the enemy level limit... that didn't change the design of the system itself.

How the hell did a friendly topic about ng+ vs ng preferences turn into a flame war. Too address some of upagains points, it’s not a bad idea to respec and not assign skills as a workaround. I honestly hadn’t thought of that. I’m not sure I’d call that a flexible system though as it’s a workaround not a planed outcome and it requires a lot of finessing to get the right level of skill and advancement. And I’m not sure how asking for more customization tools which would make a more flexible and easy to use system is selfish as it would help everyone who wanted to use ng+ and make your idea more intuitive.

Like ng+ transfer enemy level at Ryder+10 but transfers Ryder as level 1, keep mods and research. Dials to choose that stuff myself would make ng+ not only more attractive to me but I suspect to many other people. If it’s built into the system it makes it easier to do what you suggested. And at a higher level of flexibility.