Pathfinder=Glorified scout?

Your wrong but since this is the spoiler free section all i will say is their is a reason pathfinders are bigger than scouts and so important.

That should be the name of almost every protagonists in RPGs then
At least the game helps in giving a reason for doing several of the things we have to do, both in main and side quests, unlike other games (Inquisition and ME3 included).

maybe I will maybe I won't....if the reviews pan out as I think they will chances are we actually might find out

Devs have been giving RPG protagonists titles for years. Vault Dweller, Bhaalspawn, Champion of Cyrodiil, Lone Wanderer, ect. I think it helps with marketing, and probably internal development. The important thing is the tile has to sound 1) Cool, and 2) Memorable.

Shepard's tile was just his/her military rank, which I found pretty neat.

which was a problem for Shepard as a Character and one of the reasons i am looking forward to being ryder.

We will know more when we get our hands on the game, but this whole thing seems to be part of the theme of the game. Everyone is unprepared. They are all over their heads. Except for maybe Cora but events in the game make it so Ryder gets the position and not her.

Instead of Pathfinders they should have been called Gray Wardens.

"PATHFINDER=GLORIFIED SCOUT?"

...yes? Glorification isn't always bad.

And yeah, scout, recon, explorer, defender, solver, whatever.

Yes, they 'need a Pathfinder'. But actually, I don't see it being an overglorification. You're actually not a savior, even if you're the most useful person over time. You're not the one big hero, there's other Pathfinders and there's others making sure that spaces are defended (APEX is relatively more useful to an effort than N7 MP groups ever were, I'd say).

I feel some silliness where it feels like Bioware's trying to merge the Shepard-ness of before with a desire to make a protagonist just be a newbie in a new land, but otherwise I'm not bothered.

An elite squad with top of the line Milky Way technology which may or may not be comparable in power to Andromeda technology?

Forgive me if I don't have much faith in that.

Also, if they were to land on an advanced Illium like planet full of powerful and potentially hostile Andromeda aliens with unknown and uncontested technology, I sincerely doubt that our heroes would be able to survive the encounter should these aliens decide to kill them.

Like when Shepherd lands on Tuchanka in Mass Effect 2 and the leader of the "welcome" party tells her that they'll tell her she's no longer welcome there right before they open fire. As badass as Shepherd is, what are the odds of her surviving such an occurrence? An entire clan of krogan, the largest and most powerful on the planet, versus her and her 3 man fireteam? Pretty phuqing low im sure. Chances are good that they'll be dinner.

Didn't you read the memo? Andromeda Initiative is basically YOLO Initiative, that has no reasonable chain of command/line of succession, incompetent and traitorous people all over the place and don't feels like recon vehicles should have any guns.

Who are the leaders and coordinators of the whole Andromeda Initiative?

Who do these Pathfinders report to?

If they're in the field then they're not the leaders. If they're not the leaders then how can they have so much power?

As much power and freedom as Shepherd had, she still took orders from her superiors namely Admirals Hackett and Keith Motherfucking David.

Shepard as a spectre didn't really take order from anyone other then the council. A Spectre has to listen only to them. Shepard listening to them is more out of respect then the spectre title.
From what I saw, you do meet your superiors on Nexus. Your power isn't unlimited.

Oh thank goodness lol