Bioware's hardon for deserts

Yep, I found it disappointing as well.
Tried to make a thread about it but apparently not many care so much.

Strongly-worded posts have a higher trigger effect on people to make them respond.

And then you have Voeld which is also desert but white

I believe the barren worlds were designed more to accommodate the Nomad gameplay, so that the speed of the Nomad would not outpace the engine's ability to render highly dense environments. This is also why mounts are so slow in DAI. Any faster and you'd have problems rendering those lush environments in front of you.

But yeah, having only one explorable world in the entire game that wasn't a wasteland was a real disappointment for me as well.

I would have preferred each world having a smaller barren section you could drive around in, then force you to disembark and explore the rest of the region on foot. And those areas they could pack with all kinds of dense vegetation/features and interesting things like we have DAI, etc..

Where I live looks like Eos, except we have fewer trees.

Yeah, it would be nice to have more planets like Havaarl (sp?) instead. Would have been really nice if the planets had remained the way they looked in that initial briefing video about them. What are the odds that in the Andromeda sequel, the planets will go back to looking how they looked in that briefing video and that we'll actually get to explore them?

Yea the desert planet/barren wasteland is really getting old at this point both Inquisition and Andromeda had it. Two (three if you count Voeld) in Andromeda and three in Inquisition, just at night. Also, desert/barren wastelands make your game sound better when you can say: "It's bigger then all of ME3 and some of Inquisition combined." Problem is there is no detail its well just sand and snow.

Ilos, as we saw it, was neglected for around 50k years. That's why I said "at its Prothean height". It would've been breathtaking. The Prothean city we saw in the Eden Prime console footage was just a random city, not Ilos.

SAM makes Voeld beeping intolerable!

That's exactly what I was thinking. When I first got to Havarl, I was like: "Is this Pandora?"

I'd prefer having Ryder as protagonist in future games, so I wouldn't want it set more than 5-10 years after ME:A.  That's not enough time for the processors to COMPLETELY "fix" the planets, but we could definitely see the beginnings of that process.  Eos would have more trees, it'd still be a scrub land-ish area, but with much more grass and a few larger plants.  Think Habitat 7 levels of grass and larger "trees" but a bit more Milky Way like.  Kadara could definitely see some major growth in that time, what with the main problem being toxic water.  I'd think it'd be a great place for beginning forests, not quite as lush as Aya or Havarl, but "on the way there."  Elaaden I think would stay more or less desert, but with some oasis-type areas with water and lusher plant life.  Havarl having a larger city area as a hub would be quite nice, and Voeld being a northern Europe area (still lots of glaciers and icepacks, but with solid ground and open water in places) would work quite well.  

I like your idea, but I just want it to be a little closer to ME:A's timeline, so Ryder would be more likely to be the main protagonist.