What would you accept for a "better" DA4?

You're right, we should only be able to play a gay male qunari next game tbh.

And yet I found Geralt as deep as puddle and about as appealing as shit floating across it. The characters in TW3 were so awful because the game went full teen male power fantasy... Dragon Age stomps the Witcher into the dirt in terms of quality and depth.

A clarification:

When I said I wouldn't miss romances, I wasn't targeting any specific group. In fact, I didn't target anyone at all. I just thought about where I'd make a cut if I needed resources to spend on worldbuilding and storytelling (of the actual main story), those things which make be want games the likes of DAx, TW3 or anything else broadly similar in the first place. If people choose to take that as something else, that's not my problem and certainly not my fault.

If a game does have romance and I don't like it, I avoid it. It's as easy as that. Should I ever want a game romance that desperately, I'd go and look for a game which is *about* romance, not an epic fantasy story. Romance has the potential to enrich many stories, but it's not indispensible for most of them.

Those for whom game romances are so important that they would make a big issue of the opinion that they're superfluous to the requirements of a good epic fantasy story, can rest assured that Bioware won't remove them. Most likely. They've become too much of a staple in their games. However, this thread asked our opinions, and I gave mine, and maintain it. Note that I maintain it in spite of the fact that DAO had my favorite romanceable NPC.

Liking a post that includes the phrase "get woke - go broke", lauds the virtues of being limited to playing only as a heterosexual male, and accuses BioWare of "stooping to pandering" sure seems like targeting someone.

And it's just... super convenient, I guess, that all the things that apparently make DA games "bad" are the things that are important to players of diverse ethnicity and sexuality, and are hard to find elsewhere?

Yeah, I'm sure my interest in future DA games would wane if things like romance were nixed. I understand the concept that its sacrifice means more effort is supposedly put elsewhere, but not for a second do I believe this to actually translate to reality. The truth is that it would simply be gone, and it just means fewer options for the player for a more "streamlined" experience. I see it costing less of a word budget to some degree, but the net benefit just won't be there for the players themselves, so no thanks.

This is a sweaty nerd dungeon, nobody is being canceled, the heck are you talking about.

I just don't know if the strive for realistic graphics and physics is really making games better in any way. I think style and atmosphere complimenting each other is a bigger feat than realistic hair movement and every strand of hair being carefully modeled. 

Count me in for simpler facial animations(just not offensively bad like Andromeda). I'd much rather have more variations on cut scenes depending on my choices than dynamically moving nostrils.

I'm not talking about you.  You're cool.