Is there a way Bioware can even solve the problem of animations in their future games?

A lot of it will depend which "bunch of scenes" we will be playing.

I love how you just assume my arrogance - seems you indeed didn't read my comments where I praised Witcher 3's cutscene direction and just immediately went on offensive, because I dare to point out that the issue is more nuanced than just "good/bad facial animations".

I mean, if you actually read what I said you'd know this.

Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy for a reason, you know.

Dude, I'm not saying that MEA had no problem with animations - if you read what I said you'd know that my issue is that people are blowing things way out of proportion and are literally hunting for Every. Single. Minute. Problem. with animations in MEA and present it as if that's all we get, while many pretend that some other games have far superior animations, with NO regard for context or why actually is it that they're better or why people THINK they're better.

...And you throw a tantrum and accuse me of apologizing shitty animations, when I point out issues with subjective perception and discuss at depth what are differences between animations and what potentially could be done, in a thread dedicated to discuss that 

Hahahaha - oh if only it was so simple. The last controversy in gaming world before MEA animations was some people losing collective mind over one reviewer giving last Zelda title a score that is not 10/10 and subsequently turning on Horizon Zero Dawn and campaigning against it, just because they somehow think it's Zelda's competitor! Nevermind that HZD overall has solid reviews and reputation (and that's despite HZD having serious lipsync issues).

Same thing happened with Witcher 3 and DAI. It was almost as if some people thought that if a person liked one game they can't like another - the crowds on Internet today seem to live on controversy and extreme polarization.

I don't know which parts of Internet you are living, because even as a person who generally avoids drama I see "trashing" becoming the most common Internet past-time. And yes - in many respects that "trashing" was a way disproportionate reaction to a given 'controversy'. Heck, we had entire "Internet movements" created to trash things that are entirely blown out of proportion...

Oh, so I am now nitpicking, even though my issue is with excessive nitpicking? That's hilarious.

Right - because first impressions is what matters and subjectivity doesn't exist. It's not like people can like different things, or don't come to different conclusions when they actually pay more attention or think things through, etc...

You're asking an actual artist why does it matter how the picture is painted  ? And in a world where thousands of different art-styles and opinions about art exist because people care how picture was painted or why?

... And in a thread that people are asking themselves how we could make things better????????????????????????????????????????

Seriously, at this points it just sounds like you just don't want to hear that not everything in Witcher 3 is perfect (and that's even despite me praising CDPR for being clever with the cutscene direction and overall design that pulls away from some lackluster animations) more than anything else. That's... sad.

Most of these scenes are actually 'conversation wheel' scenes - in DAI they'd be an equivalent of conversation we have with NPCs with camera zoomed out.

I wouldn't bet on actual cinematics being pulled away from the face much - but they will present a way more varied amount of different camera angles and cadres though. That's how you can distinguish between actual cinematic and 'conversation wheel' cutscene, actually. The 'conversation wheel' convos hardly ever present anything other than shot-reverse shot and that's true to pretty much all RPGs with voiced protag.

While I don't necessarily mind DAI's zoomed out conversations (a thing done specifically to draw away from a fact that there are not that many facial animations going on during those segments) I do get why there are people that don't like them - a closer camera gives a sense of intimacy between a PC and NPC. Plus.. let's face it.. it makes the whole thing look more 'cinematic', even though calling those convos cinematics is a stretch if I've ever seen one.

The problem is that I have is that these 'conversation wheel' convos will never be fully animated, while at the same time they're a staple of big RPGs with voiceovers. It's been a thing that I was curious how many studios would approach and it is quite apparent that MEA went in opposite direction to DAI. Obviously there are some lessons to learn here.

All I wanted to point out is that there you're not going to convince anyone that their opinion about witcher or ME1 having better animations or cutscenes, is wrong, because if they break it into pieces and analyse it, they would see that in ME1 characters had dark eyes, dark brows and heavy eyeliner or that Witcher has different technique for conversations.
I don't know why you have a hard time realizing that this doesn't matter. People only want animations and cutscenes to look good, convincable, appropriate, they don't care what makes them this way. And of course, you can gives ideas on how to improve, but unfortunately you also decided to tell others who don't like MEA animations or think they are inferior to witcher, that they are exaggerating and then you proceed to make make detailed analysis in order to try and prove your point. If you seriously think MEA animations are not inferior, then let's just end it here, because there is absolutely no reason in debating this further.

They have done, in my opinion, fully acceptable animation in previous games. What's a bit concerning is how they have, it would appear, gone backwards in MEA. Some of the animations are, without hyperbole, on par with games from 15 years ago. The lack of body language, unnatural head turns, unrelated emotional responses etc. just aren't acceptable in a game of this supposed calibre, in this year.

We all know they're not gonna do that. And unless they headhunt animators and programmers from DICE, hiring new people ain't gonna help. The people who worked on Andromeda now have a couple of years of experience with Frostbite, why replace them now?

... Why would they do that? The facial animations in Frostbite could be inflexible and painful for all we know, but we have entire EA working on the engine now, and a much greater pool of programmers and animators across multiple studios to find a solution. That's sort of the big reason why Bioware has moved to FB in the first place... I mean, nevermind that there's more to gaming than facial animations, important as they are and so far the reception of gameplay, level design and environments leans on very positive for MEA.

So there's no reason they should drop the engine just because ONE feature causes problems - rather, it's more logical to invest resources into improving that aspect of Frostbite.

I think we can just do away with suggestions like "Hire Competent People"
If you think about it for a minute why would any company with limited resources that wants to make profit hire incompetent people? It doesn't even make sense.
First of all its extremely difficult to get into game development. And AAA studios won't even hire people without experience. So assuming that people being hired in these studios are incompetent is just plain ridiculous.

The bigger problem here as I mentioned is resource allocation and management. Unless animation becomes cheap to do, how can bioware tackle this problem with limited resources?

Yeah, do a better job. From the animators going over a scene, to the people up top who handle goal setting and scope.

I think this game had a similar issue that DAI had in that they wanted to do so much, bragged about so much they can do, how much they could do, but then when it got close to crunch time they had to start cutting stuff to meet launch.

They had to do that in DAI, but I think they were more finished or had more time to add polish with that final 6 week delay they put on the game. For this one, I don't think they had the time to go over and do the final polishing.

The whole game through the trial feels like the rough draft of a script or film that they hadn't finished going over for final editing.

But if that was the case then all animations would be bad, which is not the case. Some of the animations in early access are really good. Which just means that they lacked the resources for doing it for all of them

I've also made the observation that people are piling on. These are the times we live in, always looking for that next outrage.
The faces are not up to the standard set by superior games, not by a longshot. They need to prioritize it in the future, but still be themselves. Because all other indications are that the remaining aspects of this game will please me greatly. It won't matter, people are far too eager to tear this thing apart.
I'm moving forward.