My Fear for the future...

I agree. More time in development to allow polishing for launch and extended time for DLC to keep it improving. The two studios, have felt the burn of adapting Frostbite to their will, I fully expect Bioware to improve and continue adding features that will enhance better storytelling because the developers can follow their vision. I think with one douchebag out of the way, I think things are on track, at least from my outside perspective.

oh poop i forgot about that.

Still i suspect that the Kett are going to be more a gateway drug for the rest of the mystery of Andromeda. Ie whoever deployed the scourge. Which again is buggy. They said they'd be sympathetic. And they have done sympathetic bad guys and anti heroes before. But the Kett are probably the most muhaha faction Bioware has done in a loooonnngg time.

true. But a lot of fan commentary are along the lines of...'this game is nothing but fetch quests...argh' when the game is nothing of the kind.

Less fetch quests doesn't really mean more story content though, because fetch quests are cheap to create, while story quests are not. As long as the fetch quests are clearly optional - and they are - couldn't they leave them in? No player will miss out on much if they skip it, other than 100% completion - do we really need to strip the game down to content dense components just so everyone gets that 100% completion without having to do things in the game they personally are not enjoying?

Anyway, I'd like to think Bioware are making their decisions for future games based on these things in descending order:

Most important:
game metrics data
feedback from test groups
surveys

Important but qualified in the sense that such feedback is non-scientific:
-constructive and specific feedback on social media
-thorough reviews by good writers who spent a significant amount of time playing the game

To be ignored:
-metacritic, as it was spammed by a lot of people with an agenda
-reviews by trash gaming writers who looked briefly at the game and bandwagoned on the negative buzz for clicks

tl;dr : I hope Bioware stick to their plan. Gamers are a fickle bunch and all feedback has to be viewed through that filter, some is useful but you have to sort through a lot of rubbish to find it.

Given that I have pretty much forgotten how DA 2 handled side quests, minus the whole stuff with the companions and...no that is pretty much it.  Anyways though again just agree to disagree.  And MEAs side quests are light years ahead of Inquisition's in terms of quality and overall direction.  Are they 'DA O/ Witcher 3 good?' no, but they are almost there. 

My fear for the future is that this international trend of right-wing resurgence will fracture the EU, leaving Putin free to gobble up countries like MnMs, and gay rights worldwide will be rolled back to 1950.

But your thing is pretty scary too.

If they don't drop the frostbite engine in favor of something more fitting a story based game, and also hire a writer that has experience and a couple of novels under their belt, then Bioware games are going to go into ever decreasing circles of junk.

OK i'll humor you...what would hiring a writer who 'has a couple of novels under their belt' do...what for BioWare exactly? They are two entirely different mediums. And not all people who write 'novels' are good at it to begin with.  And, at least over in the DA side of things, they have writers who have written for both novels and games.  And while I am unfamiliar with the writing resume of the entire staff for MEA I find it hard to believe they haven't at least...dabbled.

They have good writers. So where does the discussion go from here?

Alrighty then.  If you say so.

As far as keeping the number of quests that are strictly meaningless quests (like "fetch" quests and just stumbling on enemies throughout the maps) to a reasonable minimum, I think it is something game developers need to really do.  Small tasks may be cheaper to develop than more fleshed out side quests, but they do cost something to develop (in both dollars and employee time) and they are really just filler... generally placed in the game to enable some people to "farm" for a little more XP or a little more loot or to make inordinately large maps look fuller.  It's not just Bioware... there is an industry trend towards longer and longer games (inordinately long, IMO).

These task quests do lengthen the game and can distract the player in such a way that it makes it more difficult to follow the main story line.  IMO, this is a major flaw with TW3 (just too many monster nests and bandit camps strewn all over the map.  I have recently abandoned my second attempt to get through TW3 BECAUSE I hit a point mid-story where I just feel so far off the beaten track with a journal full of side quests and a map full of question marks that I just don't feel like finishing it.  It's simply overwhelming and I've been "at it" so long now I can hardly even remember what the main story is even about anymore.  I haven't played DA:I, but from comments here, I suspect Bioware have done much the same thing there... trying to fill an inordinately large map with "just stuff."  The industry needs to find a better balance than what they currently seem to be trending towards.  Rise of the Tomb Raider is a much smaller game overall, but their optional challenge tombs were intriguing and offered rewards that were very significant to the game overall.  There were a few smaller optional tasks, but their weren't that many and I never felt overwhelmed by their location markers on my map.  Staying involved with the main story and wanting to press it forward never seemed like the sort of "chore" it has become to feel like with TW3.  In addition, I think fully completing a game (i.e. to experience and appreciate most everything the developer created within that game) should not feel like a long, drawn out "chore" either.  Say what you will about ME3, but even finishing all those fetch quests never seemed to take so long that I felt like just quitting the entire game over them.

As colfoley has pointed out, ME:A did segregate these quests under the "tasks" menu, which does enable the player to more easily discern a fetch quest from another sort of quest, but they are still basically unnecessary.  It would be better to make the rewards for doing the more involved quests better (i.e. more XP, better loot) and keep the amount of fetching to a reasonable minimum.  Even if it doesn't necessarily mean more quality content, the little bit of budget saved could be put back into better polishing the quality content that's there.