Should bioware do one final shepard game?

Ye, and that is the problem. I can have ordinary things every day. That's not what I play a game for.

The thing about the characters with Andromeda is that yse they might have felt that way, but its still that BioWare didn't focus on that writing because they were trying to juggle all the other aspects of the game. Go back to Mass Effect 2 and they didn't have the exploration and the combat was a lot more bland for there was such as small variance for weapons, armor, and skills. Which were all improved in Mass Effect 3, but the characters suffered in Mass Effect 3 because at least in my opinion every returning character had to have an alternate because of the backlash when BioWare said not all characters would return. Originally it was said they were only going to have a handful of characters return from Mass Effect 2 due to everyone being able to die, but after non-stop pleading/requests to have everyone's personal favorite character return it was announced all characters would return.

I personally enjoyed Dragon Age 2 aside from the "sameness" that the dungeons and Kirkwall gave me, I have about the same amount of time in Dragon Age 2 that I do with Dragon Age: Inquisition. The different things they did with the game still felt like it was all there by design and not just added because there were a lot of requests to fit a certain role. Even if there were people talking about what they would have liked to see changed and tweaks were made because of that. Just because a game sold less copies doesn't mean it is less profitable either, for Dragon Age: Origins was in development for six to seven years and Dragon Age 2 suffered under EA (this is probably one of the very few instances I put the majority of blame on EA) for a rushed schedule.

It isn't a bad idea to have a game that can have a variable length, but with BioWare people focus on the story and I think that approach doesn't work in a BioWare game for it feels like you have the "A" content and then the "B" content. To me its having the content and systems fit the narrative of the game and not just placing different things into the game simply because it was requested.

I am not blaming the fans for wanting something added to the game and that isn't where my problem is. Its BioWare just throwing out the baby with the bathwater and putting everything requested into the game. One of the reasons why I think Mass Effect 3 did as well as it did was because of how close it was to Mass Effect 2 so people went into the game having an idea what to expect. Using a movie analogy with the MCU I think that is why movies do so well in that shared universe because people have been able to know what to expect in those movies, but something like Spider-Man or the X-Men movies are similar to what BioWare does because they pretty much start everything new each attempt.

For instance with Andromeda if they just focused on making combat similar to prior Mass Effect games such keeping the classes and not having the bloated crafting system while focusing on the character content I think that would have been a better approach. The problem came where so many things that were either fan favorites or things that people have been wanting to see for such a long time were all thrown into a single game it was just bound for problems. Then they could have made that game well and then expanded what they were doing while keeping the basis of Andromeda the same and added deeper exploration in the next game.

The problem is a lot of those things that you listed still fall into Andromeda and a lesser extent towards the complaints against Inquisition. For I can see what you are listed can be used against Andromeda and Inquisition so what is the point of implementing what people are wanting if they are upset about those things maybe in a different way and on top of that upset that they feel BioWare abandoned its roots?
  For how many people are currently saying the way BioWare is currently releasing their games isn't worth the $60 price tag?

-Not open world can translate to boring empty world.
-No long time player engagement can be the people that stopped playing the game after 30 hours.
-No dialogues/dialogue options could also be the bad dialogue like you said felt written by AI.
-No side activities/quests sounds pretty close to the "worthless MMO fetch quest" complaints.
-No replayability again people stopped playing before finishing the game a first time.

Its all about making a balanced game and not just throwing everything under the sun that people want to see in the game. I think Mass Effect 3 evolved nicely from Mass Effect 2 because they heard the complaints, but instead of throwing out the systems they tweaked what was there. I still think even with Mass Effect 3 they listened too much when it came to returning characters for a lot of the "lesser" returns were only there because BioWare wanted to give everyone their favorite to return. So characters like Jack or Grunt I doubt were originally going to return and it wound have been the crew and probably Miranda were the ones to return.

Just to boil it down for unfortunately I ramble when responding to broken up responses. Its not the fans fault, but BioWare is giving me the impressions that listens too closely to what fans want. If you want to use a more modern example it would be the same as CDPR giving in and putting third person view back into the game because that seems to be the most common fault people have with Cyberpunk right now. I am pretty sure it can be found from other developers ignoring what people are requesting frequently because they want to make their game feel cohesive. BioWare can make adjustments to make the game better, but just adding features because they are requested I think is a bad idea it needs to fit into the story they are trying to tell not just being there because its a wanted feature.  Its like Dragon Age: Inquisition on the PS3/360 BioWare got flak for the quality of game, but they kept that because they originally announced the games for those consoles.  Now do I think we might have gotten a game closer to what was previewed before that if they cut support for those games.  So what should have BioWare done and its a no-win situation for they picked do something for the players by keeping it on the older consoles or do they develop for the new consoles and have all the features they wanted.  My being selfish I rather they have a better experience by ignoring what they thought players would like and released it for the newer consoles and given enough warning that it wouldn't be on the older hardware.  Now I know people probably preferred that BioWare released the game on the older hardware and I am pretty sure there are people that would have wanted both.

Listening to fans is a double edge sword. We have good and bad ideas. Bioware should take the fan's ideas that make sense for their story.

My biggest problem with ME3's characters is the unknown sacrifices they made to have all the characters return for I think all of them had an alternate created if they died in Mass Effect 2.  How much of the design for the returning characters lost some of their more unique style or were written in a way they could fit into a box that could be replaced by a new character.  For a lot of them felt a lot different between The Citadel DLC and the main game.

They should have cut the number of companions in half for ME2, and save some of them for ME3.

That many killable characters only added to ME3's problems.

Since Oriana has a proven ability to hack Miranda's mail, she can contact Shepard as easily as Miranda did. Or is it canon that they have no contact if Shepard doesn't connect them in ME2?

The problem with "doing what ME1 did but doing it better" is that ME1's design vision wasn't all that coherent in the first place. Exploration isn't Shepard's job, and the reasons for diverting the Normandy to those empty systems ranged from flimsy to non-existent. The exploration wasn't for anything except to check of a box on the List of Things Space Games Need to Have.

(Honestly, I though ME2 got this right. Normandy needs stuff for upgrades, and you're searching for it. If you bump into something while you're doing that, it's a bonus)

I'm not sure how to solve this problem. Plot and RP issues aside, the two issues I hear cited most often are that there isn't enough interesting stuff to do, and that Ryder never goes anyplace where somebody hasn't gone before, either exiles or angara. How do you fix both of these?

In most RPGs, exploring never-inhabited wilderness isn't what the characters are supposed to be doing, and they don't do it. (If it's a wilderness now, you're after the ruins or whatnot.) This is only a thing for space games, and not even all that many of them.

Starflight did essentially what ME2 did -- the ship needs to be upgraded and your organization can't afford to do it, so you need to hunt up resources to do it yourself. (In practice, following plot leads is more efficient than just exploring the galaxy.) Non-RPG games have adopted this as the central gameplay loop.

Concerning ME1, this is one of those personal taste things. I've given up on the UNCs altogether. They're not very interesting and make no RP sense, and since I'm in the genre to RP, I'd probably blow them off even if they were better.

Hey, is there a way to embed files into posts here? I figure I should just upload the damn outline rather than talking about it. I guess I can always use Dropbox or some such.