Mass Effect Andromeda General Discussion

Some of these concept arts look so cool and it'd have been great to see a few of them incorporated into the final product. So much potential was lost and just thinking of it drives me up the wall

This is one aspect where I feel the game doesn't get enough credit. You never see it mentioned in reviews/articles how much of an improvement the open world is in this game when compared to Dragon Age Inquisition.
It feels like 90% of the quests in Inquisition are just as you described. Having played the two back to back (with over 300 hours total in Inquisition), it's easy to see how much better Andromeda does at filling its open spaces. You get a lot more interaction with NPCs and story relevant bits instead of just getting a note to kill something. Inquisition just feels so empty and detached from the main story while Andromeda's worlds feel relevant to the story. Having fewer (and smaller) open areas to visit definitely helped, I think.
It's not perfect and I prefer the more linear, story-based approach of the older games, but it was fun enough for me to complete the game twice. It even left me wanting to do yet another playthough...but I'm waiting for the m/m "improvements".

Settlement list!  Hah, that's kind of cool, even if it reminds me of FO4.  I wonder if we'll see some of this stuff in either post-game DLC or in MEA2.  I wonder who has the settlement of "Texas"?  Sounds like it could be the one on Elaaden.  I also definitely like the looks of Cora, Liam and Peebee much more in the concept art.  Though, I wonder why a human is "Asari" and an asari is "Asarian". And, OMG, the black Sarah (spelled with the "h" in concept art) is just gorgeous!  

It also looks like they were originally going for a red/blue conversation dialogue, even if it was "agree/disagree" instead.  I noticed on the Tempest, there were spots designated with red and blue x's.

I'd be of the opinion that side quests are best when they are linked in some way to the overall theme or story of the game. A side quest should be optional to complete the game but provide additional world building or story elements to those who complete them.

I'll use Horizon: Zero Dawn here as an example (because most people seem to love it). It's side missions are not linked to the main story but provide world building through storytelling and IMO a player would miss out on some essential info if they were skipped. A Daughter's Vengeance and Honor the Fallen for example, provide important insights into how the Carja and the other tribes are adapting to the new peace after years of  Carja aggression. Not completing those quests, would leave a gap in players understanding of the world but the fact that they are interesting means that most people probably did complete them.

IMO some players were still burned from how lame alot of the DA:I side quests were and dismissed the MEA tasks as fetch quests and so didn't even bother with them. I'm not sure what BioWare could've done to prevent that, maybe improving how the quests in MEA were structured in the menu so that it's more obvious that they are important. Because I wouldn't necessarily want them to change the tasks themselves, I liked how they can start off as something seemingly straightforward and then expand. 

It does have separate categories for allies & relationship missions & for some of the more important planets specific side missions but I definitely think that another category should've been added. As you say tasks make it sound like this missions are all fetch quests. 

Very true. Too many mission categories would crowd the UI, which never looks great.

As Scottphoto has suggested, if the fetch quest missions had a bigger impact than perhaps the grouping would have made more sense. For example, hydroponics could have alien plants growing in it after you finishing scanning all the plant samples. 

Maybe something as simple as not calling them 'Tasks', which make them sound dull or most of them could've been rolled up into the Planet Assignments section and 'tasks' just left for the handful of fetch quests. 

That is the million euro question. Why have these quests at all? In my experience, they tend to be used as an easy way to encourage the player to explore an area they may not have otherwise.  For example, the 'breaking rocks for science' lead me to explore an area of a planet I might have ignored and I found some cool things to explore out there.  They are also a quick way to give some world building, there is one in MEA that involves setting up beacons. The disembodied voice of the dead engineer's, dead daughter offers encouragement every time you set one up, turning a basic quest into something tragic. 

Ultimately quests like these seem like a legacy issue from the MMORPGs that open world single player games get alot of their ideas from. MMORPGs have fetch quests so there is always something for a player to do & plenty of ways to level so they keep their subscription up to date. Open World single player games looked to MMORPGs for alot of their game design ideas and this was one they picked up, stuck with and now it's a tradition that no one seems to question.

While I would rather fewer quests with more depth or more stages, if we have to fetch quests, I'd at least like them to make sense within the context of the game. In MEA, scientists asking you to scan alien minerals & plant life makes sense, you're a frontline explorer, you'll come across all kinds of weird stuff on your journey and scientists need to study it so the AI can survive.
The Inquisitor stopping to help every random jerk when there are demons pouring out of a hole in the sky doesn't. 

Quite frankly, I rather less content is considered "optional". Mandatory content tends to get more attention, so I'd rather little optional content and instead more ways to engage with the mandatory content; approaching it in a different order has an effect or different outcomes based on decisions made in other mandatory quests. The more quests designers know for a fact you will do, the more those quests can be interwoven into the rest of the game. 

lol well that makes more sense, they do look pretty neat on that site, with the metallic blue. Still a very silly addition but better to think of these instead of seeing them as Beats rip off

Here is an Andromeda question, forgive me if it's answered in the game and I missed it: who built the mining facilities on H-047c? I know who's running them, but how did they get there? Is it supposed to be exiles? The timeline is janky enough as it is–what, the Hyperion arrives 18 months after the Nexus, then a couple of months pass before the uprising/exiles getting the boot. They left with some shuttles, the clothes on their backs, some weapons, and two weeks worth of food. In about a year they've spread all over...I realize some of it, like Kadara, is simply taking over buildings that were already there. But H-047c...they brought vehicles to shield from the radiation, then somehow built all that stuff and got a successful mining operation going? Was it the Angara who did it? I know I should enable my Video Game Logic, but I find myself a-wonderin' all the same.

Also, it seems like playing as an Exile might have been a bit more fun. They're the ones who really explored, who had to find a way to survive, and got shit done! All without the assistance of a creepy head computer!