"You shouldn't care what other people think."

I spent, nearly a couple of hours running around Aya, speaking to people, buying fruit, being a diplomat.
I'm really enjoying this game for what it is.

It's a shame folk are getting out of their tree that the game isn't what they wanted.
It wasn't made for them personally.

Explaining concerns is just fine, this is a discussion forum after all.

The way I'm approaching this huge game is to enjoy it for what it is.

Casual sports gamer, huh.

PTSD, OP?

I am who I am, and I love what I love. It includes Andromeda.

 Where did you come with that?

Did it not occur to you that people who love BW's past games but are disappointed with MEA might also have this same concern?

While there are things I enjoy about this game and I am still playing it, I am concerned that some of the aspects that I don't like are now going to carry over to DA4, thus threatening the future of my favorite franchise. Will we now forever be stuck with somewhat spineless protagonists who can only be different versions of "nice?" Are they going to take away my ability to set combat tactics and take control of my party in DA4 too (consider that this was already watered-down in DAI and has now all but vanished in MEA)? Will DA4 also require several loading screens/travel animations before I can reach my desired fast travel point? (In DAI, you can usually call up any map you want and go directly to any established fast travel point, which in MEA morphed into requiring at least one stop at a landing zone when you travel to another planet, and sometimes more than that, depending on your starting location and destination.)

Don't make the mistake of assuming that people who find fault with the game are "haters" or not "true fans" of BW games. Constructive criticism (not name-calling or other nastiness) is valid even if you don't agree with it.

I've seen this point of view a few times, and I'm curious: does this only apply to game developers? Or if my doctor screws up, am I not allowed to "whine" about that either because I'm not a doctor? I'm just wondering where the line is.

So I just love Andromeda because I don't know better? Despite playing every Bioware game since KOTOR and playing both RPGs and Shooters for the last 20 years?

So what exactly would it take to qualify me to have my own opinion, then?

Are you and I really going to do this again? Nowhere did I mock the game. (Unless you consider calling Ryder "spineless" to be mockery, in which case, don't be so sensitive. I think the Inquisitor is bland, too, and I like DAI anyway.) I brought up some things I don't like about it in order to illustrate concerns I have for future BW games. It is not mockery to say that I don't like not having tactical control over my squad, nor is it mockery to say I don't like all the unnecessary travel animations.

You need to actually read my posts and not just reflexively get all defensive.

Not all of them, and you can't ignore all the positive things of the game.

Metacritic scores barely matter. There was only one time they mattered, when Obsidian failed to meet 85 and lost their bonus from Bethesda. Nowadays I doubt publishers pay that much attention to them (and as far as I'm concerned, New Vegas is leaps and bounds above the trite mediocrity that Bethesda Game Studios pushes time and again, so that it has a lower Metacritic score doesn't matter to me none).

There's one thing EA demands: $. If the game is panned on Metacritic but moves enough copies to meet their expectations, they will consider it a success. Hopefully it means Bioware goes back to the drawing board and figures out what caused Andromeda's issues, but unless the game really bombs financially I doubt this is the end of Mass Effect at all.

I definitely believe this to be the case as well.  The bottom line is money. 

I stumbled onto this vid today (by YongYea), that talks about just that:

Please enlighten me - are the animations not that bad? The writing is on par with the trilogy? Lol - the story is not a rehash? The planet loading is acceptable? The quests aren't fetchy and boring?

We're just not gonna see eye to eye on anything so you might as well hit that ignore button.