20,000 Human colonists

I would have to respectfully disagree. It's a very boring and cliched trope in fiction.

Imagine, if you would, that as a younger child you and some friends wanted to go and play pretend super heroes, so you all go outside and begin to pick your super powers. One girl wants invisibility, but this other boy says that he has invisibility but somehow better than the girl. Another boy says he wants the ability to control fire, but then that same boy from earlier pipes up and says that he has that power too, but way better than the second. And so on and so forth until this one kid has all the powers and can use each one of them better than anyone else. You also can't tell this kid off or exclude him from playing because the parents watching you all are ensuring that everyone has to play. Doesn't sound like much fun does it? That's basically what it's like with humanity compared to all the other species and races in these settings.

I'm tired of hearing how great we are at everything, at how no one can match up to our ingenuity or "genetic diversity", it's dull and comes across as a poor man's fanfic involving self gratification. Maybe if the setting was more balanced and humanity wasn't some innate "God race" I would find them more interesting. As it is now, I find it very hard to see humanity as anything even remotely similar to an underdog. I feel more interest and concern for a continued presence in the universe towards the alien side of things (the actual underdog in these settings) than I ever did for humanity.

If I'm going to mold a new civilization, I'd rather it wasn't something that sank into barbarism because an unforseen disaster killed all our highly trained specialists and teh survivors were forced into a hardscrabble existence.

Do we really want the first intergalactic colony looking like this?

Words like 'boring' are subjective. It's boring to you it's enjoyable for me.

Funnily enough, I was that kid. I invented a super hero as a kid who had every power of every super-hero ever. I called him 'super-fantastic'

Mind you I didn't tend to play as him in the playground I just used to draw comic books about him and the Thunderbirds-type organization that he was the leader of.


Comes across to you.  Comes across to me as everything I want in a story about humanity.

Not saying you're wrong to feel as you do. It's all subjective. You like what you like and I like what I like. But if Andromeda is what you think it is then I'll be very happy.

Humans are best. Always have been. Always will be. No other species comes close.
Why?
- best looking
- best entertainment
- best vacation spot
- best food
- best sports
- best clothing
- the best looking homeworld in the universe
- and the most important of all. it takes a human to save the galaxy

HUMANITY #1

"lets go humans, lets go" clap your hands, "lets go humans, lets go" clap your hands. One more time. "lets go humans, lets go" clap your hands

Why do you think any of those things haven't been planned for? The whole game is about them locating worlds to colonize, dealing with the locals and defending themselves and from what we've seen of the game so far they've been doing perfectly fine in that regard.  The pathfinders, in fact, seem like a very significant part of the plan to do all those things.

There is no way to get information about the civilizations in Andromeda until you go there. That's a given before you start so I don't see how it's relevant to the plan. The important thing is to find the Golden Worlds and then you can work out the best approach when you get there.

A good plan is about predicting and preparing for potential obstacles before you encounter them.  It's about providing the flexibility and means to cope with whatever is found. In terms of defense, diplomacy, transport, the ability to scan and mine for resources, the ability to adapt and learn from the technology of the locals and to develop new offensive or defensive capabilities, accordingly. All that's covered as far as we've seen so far.

Let's be fair. Most sci-fi tells the story from the humans point of view, and Bioware is nowhere near the worst when it comes to this (Yes Star Trek i am looking at you).

And by the way, how Mass Effect wasn't supposed to be like that?
Ever since the very first game the story was told from Shepard's perspective, a human.

I never said it shouldn't have been told from a human perspective. I said it was marketed as humanity just being a part of the galactic society and are the newcomers/underdogs, and yet the games went and made humanity the center of the universe and are the apex species.

Yes it was. To say it never did is ignoring facts. Humanity was painted as the perfect species with how Harbinger wanted to harvest us into a Reaper, and even Mordin went on about how genetically humans are better than the other races. Then there was humanity doing things races centuries or millennia more advanced than us couldn't do. As for humanity being the center of the universe, just look at Mass Effect 3. The whole game is literally the other races joining up to save humanity's homeworld under the humans' lead.

People say this a lot, but there's nothing in the lore that specifically says how long it took anyone to do anything. What we do know is that a lot of species, upon reaching the levels present in Mass Effect ended up stagnating, but there's nothing ever explicitly stated that says that it took the Asari three, 400, or 10,000 years to get to where they are at the start of ME1, likewise for everyone else.

We were given plenty of reasons as for why the Volus, Elcor, and Hanar aren't, but for all we know, when the Turian's discovered Prothean ruins and Reaper tech, it jumped them centuries ahead of their current path as well. All of the species shown on screen and shown to not be on par with humanity had reasons. Batarians dipped out of Council society because of border disputes, Quarian's were ostracized for unleashing AI's, Krogan society was beaten and bastardized until they began to fight themselves, and the Drell were bordering on extinction.

And since I'm of the opinion that there's plenty of other alien races off-screen that weren't explicitly stated--because why wouldn't there be?--they could make up various other nooks and crannies.

And the only reason why humans are of any importance is happenstance, even taking into account all of the genetic viability and whatnot Harbinger talked about. And in reality, that doesn't make human's special, it just means that humanity can be turned into a Reaper before being eradicated versus simply being eradicated. And even then, it's clear that if it weren't for the Genophage and their poor immune systems due to isolation, Krogan's and Quarian's would've been Reaper viable as well.

Humanity isn't special; their lack of experience and relative newness to the galactic stage allowed for flexibility. If the Ralaoi came up at the same time and had some time before they ran away and pretended they hadn't just made first contact when the Reapers were showing up, they probably would've demonstrated the same sort of flexibility.

For most of the game, the Citadel wasn't over Earth though. And yet Shepard went to everyone and convinces them to take back Earth when at the time of those conversations it was just another planet being attacked by the Reapers, no more important than any other. 
I don't get what you are asking in regards to the last part of your post. 

Yes there is. For example it took the Turians 100 years and victory in one of the bloodiest wars of our cycle's history to earn a Council seat, and yet with humanity it only took 26 years and victory in one battle. Then there are things like humanity inventing Medi-Gel or Carrier ships, the latter of which is especially ridiculous since there is no way a militant race like the Turians would not have done that long before humans even invented aircraft.  

At least Shepard was doing something. To get help, he/she had to help the other species get what they wanted and only when that was achieved, did they join. It wasn't words that convinced them, it was Shepard's actions.

Some folks have posted they didn't like that the Citadel was moved to Earth. A few mentioned why not Thessia or Palaven.