Ryder too soft

I'm glad I didn't play this game.

Looting is wrong

Well they did that with Sara Ryder, I was very pleased with how she changed, and where she ended up at the end of the story....PLEASE IGNORE, BIOWARE!

How did Ryder change? To me she was a snarky pushover the whole way through...

Hell the way other people began relating to Ryder also changed throughout the course of the game's events. 

Riddle time!

Who runs around trying to play the game but never amounts to nothing but a failure?

Not very smart?  Maybe your Ryder wasn't but my Scott was actively interested in science and expressed it to multiple people, including some Angarans on Voeld who were quite surprised to hear it.  

Why isn't he a charismatic or convincing Pathfinder either?  My Ryder is.  He's schmoozed with a lot of important people, gathered a lot of people that believe in his abilities, settled four worlds for colonies, brought the Krogan back in line with the AI - at least enough to work with them - hunted the Archon down, rescued all of the missing arks and retrieved the map to Meridian.  That's even just a few things that popped in my head as I was typing.

I... uh... think he's doing pretty well for himself, being young and previously inexperienced aside.  He now has probably more experience in the field than nearly anyone else in the AI.

Considering everyone in the AI was sitting on their butts for 14 months lamenting the fact that the golden worlds were a bust I think it's pretty accomplished the child of the original human pathfinder shows up and rights the sinking ship single handily.  Now the AI has four Pathfinders again, four settlements to build off, a race of people that I forged an alliance with..  Those are some decent accomplishments.

Agree with bolded!

Granted, I found some of Ryder's dialogue a little juvenile here and there ("looting is wrong" - uggg), but I did appreciate that she was interested in science. I didn't realize the male Ryder also did this (I assumed he was more military because of his background). Anyway, I liked that is set her apart from Shepherd, who was all military and bravado (which was, admittedly, very fun to play).  But in so many shooters, I play the grizzled veteran.  I appreciated that Bioware at least tried something new, even if it was a bit lukewarm in parts.

I think if they would have tried to make a new Shep 2.0 character type, folks would have been even more annoyed that they were not like the orignal Shep.  However, i can understand why some folks feel it went a little too far in the opposite direction.  My main grip is not the "softness" of the character as much as that their attitude/snark, which often feels like they are not taking anything seriously.  It loses the emotional weight, for me, and kinda made me lose investment in the bigger story.

Also...the above GIF wars were hilarious!!! I would never go up against Finally Faceman in a GIF-off!!

Mine was Kaidan.  Which, with a recent mod, is available in ME1 (no weird quirks to it, either).