A big issue in ME:A (that isn't necessarily a 'problem' per se)

That's just one race, though. I'm not saying I expect to delve deeply into multiple alien cultures, but it's nice to get a glimpse of them– the way that both ME1 and DA:O did.

Based on the math of what we actually see, I'd say you're wrong, at least in terms of a lack of hub zones/'locations.' The number of hub-worlds equivalent to those in the ME trilogy was pretty consistent in MEA.

You seem to be talking about hub worlds, which is fine- I'd be a bit snarky if you said that Thessia was a good 'civilized' world- but if we look at the number of settlements, what we had in MEA was pretty much equivalent to what we had in previous games as far as seeing/exploring 'civilized' areas went.

We have the Nexus, Aya, Kadara Port, and Eladen's Krogan colony, all of which are separate/isolated zones from the worlds that they're on. That's pretty much equivalent to ME2's Citadel/Illium/Kadara Port/Tuchanka, with each of the MEA worlds having more space/events over more of th game in their respective planet-zones. That's not only on par/surpassing ME2's hub system, but significantly larger than the hub/'civilization exploration areas' that we got in ME1 and ME3.

MEA has a very frontier/new settlement zone theme, but not to the point of losing civilization hubs. And what they did have demonstrated they can still mix urban density zones/cities (Nexus, Kadara, Aya) into the broader theme. I'd say that the Nexus is a match for the Citadel over the course of the trilogy, and Aya is a match for any other world in terms of finding/exploring a new culture and society. Kadara's no slouch either, even if we didn't have isolated combat missions within it like we did Omega.

MEA only introduced one alien species, so it makes sense there was only one alien world, but it'd be pretty easy to see more races introduced in in the next Andromeda which leads to more alien worlds akin to Aya.


, which are pretty much equivalent to what we got with the Citadel/Illium/Tuchanka. That's less than

Personally, this was a selling point for me. There's a real, intuitive sense of adventure that comes along with exploring a wholly new galaxy and interacting with technology that has remained untouched for untold centuries, tapping into eldritch knowledge that was previously unknown to any modern sentience.

But I'm with you; strolling through Omega that first time, strutting around as THE Commander Shepard in that hive of scum and villainy, that was my quintessential Mass Effect experience.

This strikes me as not actually being about the hubs, then, but the novelty of the new races discovered/introduced, which is a separate issue. We can look at mechanical comparisons and scopes of the hubs we have, but your specific complaints beyond the very general are about the novelty of races/societies. That's a bit hard to carry on- by ME3, there were no new races and the only novel aspect of the (1) hub the game had was that it was multi-area- but we can at least see how ME1 and ME2 had the novelty appeal. In ME1, every race was new. In ME2, Terminus and Krogan were new societies to witness, and we got Batarians for real for the first time if you hadn't done ME1 DLC.

That's a very valid complaint- of the hubs we have, three of the four are purely milky way and thematically familiar to the point of being retreads ('Citael'/'Outlaw'/'Krogan')- but it's separate from the size/scope of the hubs themselves. As a whole, MEA has more hub space and does more with them than most of the equivalent hubs in the trilogy- it just matters if you like prefer mostly continuous mission spaces outside, or false-scope expansion of more linear set-pieces through an area that thematically is but technically isn't part of the hub world space. 


There are two separate ways Bioware can address that, which I'd say are not only easy but likely come in the future because Andromeda has in no way ruled them out. The first: more focus on hub worlds with new species/novel societies. The second: special stand-alone combat missions on the hub-settings we already have access to, to expand the sense of size/scale without changing the hub itself. They both have costs, but they're both technically feasible and easily plausible.


Hub-world focus would likely be the best to help your sense of novelty: more Aya's, less Milky Way dominance. This isn't necessarily a change in the way Andromeda did hubs, mind you, only the allocation of societies we find in them. If we leave the Heleus cluster for another- which is totally compatible with MEA's tech capabilities- we're perfectly likely to find another new species or three, and more societies in conflict. The key here is new races, and new polities/cultures that aren't variations of the Initiative- which should be pretty easy if we leave the Heleus cluster. Imagine a new race-power, or a Kett splinter-faction we can work with (same race/tech, different societal bent), or even another multi-species empire/alliance fighting againt the Kett. So hubworlds in the next cluster could be [Initiative Expedition Station], [New Race-State Species World], [New Multi-Race Empire Hub].

The cost here is the creation of new models of races- but I think this is a natural progression anyway. MEA was done with a new Frostbite engine, so they had to recreat assets from the previous series, including the races. That limitation shows (see number of distinct Asari/Angaran models), so while it's working up to the basics new species will be higher relative cost. But now that base models are developed for most of the milky way species, the next game can focus on more new species (if it doesn't have to fixate on the Quarian ark species). Once we have those new species models and assets, it'll be easier to build new and novel worlds built around them.


Option two was to use stand-alone combat missions to enhance the sense of scope and scale of the hubworlds we have. Basically, missions that occur 'in the spaces we don't see', to emphasize how much more there is to a space station/area than what we see in the hub. This is zero-sum with creating combat missions outside of hubs in truly 'new' places- there's only resources for so many missions, so every combat zone on the Nexus or backstreets of Kadara is a combat zone not in a new vault/Remnant Space Station/Kett flagship/etc.- but this is a matter of allocation.




I bring these two options up because- from what I understand of your unease- these seem to address the root of your disatisfaction. It's not the mechanics of the hubworlds that gets you- it's the allocation of focus- an that's something that both has an external constraint (alien species model constraints) and an internal logic that will pass with MEA (needing to establish Heleus/Milky Way power clusters: Nexus/Exiles/Krogan). Since some of these will naturally fade away with the likely evolution of the Andromeda series, assuming it continues, it might be better to tailor wishes/wants towards those in-line improvements, lest you risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I suppose a way to frame this is- if ME:A had more hubs dedicated to new species and societies that weren't thematic retreads/reboots of the old series, would you like how these hubs worked more or less than their equivalent hubs in the Mass Effect trilogy?

Is how the Nexus works as a hub better or worse than the Citadel in, say, ME2?

Are the mechanics of Kadara as a place to often return to better or worse than Omega?

Is Aya a good model for future 'alien society' hubs?

Etc.

These will help others- including any devs watching- know not just what they did wrong, but what they did right, so they can take the best.


Take Kadara Port, for example. Honestly, I like the concept of it- a place of riftraft and flotsam and not-so-nice people making a claim for themselves, a place anything can be gotten so that you come back here for various quests- but there are mechanical inefficiencies I dislike vis-a-vis Omega. Slow doors is just one of it- the fact that there are three zones of interest (Port, under-city, and the exploration zone), but I have to start at the Port each time just means more annoying loading screen/slow doors. Why can't I fast travel to travel to the slums, rather than take an annoying elevator and then run? Why can't I just land down the mountain at my new colony? Plus, the port comes annoyingly late in the game, depending how completionist you play the previous three/four worlds.

So I like the concept of Kadara, but I prefer the mechanics of Omega, which were easier to run around in and see a sense of scale in an otherwise modest area. Too many doors in Kadara.

Your post is excellent across the board; I am just shortening the quote so it's more clear what I am responding to.

From the bolded portion I realise that we might have been operating on different definitions of 'scope' to an extent. I mean scope precisely in that sense of discovery, new races, et cetera. The scope of the game universe, rather than the physical size of the hubs that the PC gets to run around and do missions in.