CC and Ryder variety

I think that's because there's so few options in character creations. Each face is stuck with a eye shape, certain eyebrow and a certain lip shape. Eyes, brows and lips are a huge part of expression and not being able to put a variety of combinations in them really restricts what outcomes we can have.

People seem to avoid the short hair on the preset I favor, and tend to use more makeup. Hooray, mine is plain AF and that's the way I likes it.

I've ranted extensively about what a pointless step backwards this is. It's not like we gained anything by having these presets. Most people don't even seem to like them, but there isn't a lot you can do to edit them, either. And for some arbitrary reason, we can't edit the default faces, which are also scans. At least we can use Scott and Sara's hairs, but Scott's beard and for some strange reason, their skin tone, is locked out of the custom faces.

I managed to make a face I really like, but it makes me sad that I've already seen the same one with only minor differences quite a few times already.

You can't really make anything unique, unlike DA:I's CC where you could go into the "Post Pictures of Your Inquisitor" thread and constantly be surprised at the variety.

It's just such a huge step backwards. It's the most limited CC in Mass Effect or Dragon Age, and that kind of regression should never happen. Why they didn't just port DA:I's CC and use it as a baseline baffles me, since it was on the same engine.

Exactly, those features are incredibly important. And so basic. Yet, we can't edit them. How are we supposed to make unique characters without changing eye shape, or eyebrow style, or lip shape? Everything is guaranteed to look similar. Did they not do playtesting, or just think logically about what the outcome would be? People love the roleplaying parts of your roleplaying games. Don't remove them or dumb them down.

I am so vexed at their decision-making. Whoever opted for face-scans at the expense of even a basic CC should be fired And that's not even getting into the other reasons why the CC sucks. Where are the pale skin tones? Why can't I change eyebrow colour separately from scalp-hair? Why is there still no natural red hair available? Why can't we edit complexion? None of those things are unfair requests.

But it's okay, because we have tons of weird tattoos and makeup options! That'll let our characters be unique!

Good point, the preview pictures don't do the ingame models justice. But there still isn't nearly as much variety as there should be.

I've stated on multiple occasions elsewhere that the CC is lacking. I'm just being a little flippant because of reasons. 

Maybe I'm seeing things, but the preset used to create Reyes is probably the most common male NPC in the game, at least among the ones I see on Kadara. Even the one that initiates the bar fight with Drack is that preset. In my first playthrough, I actually used this to create the brother, only to realize that he was everywhere lol. Good thing I never romanced Reyes. Implications…unpleasant. Being able to change the mouth eyes and nose would make a huge difference. 

It's been my observation (and it could be skewed) from the posts I've seen here and elsewhere that some have stopped sharing their pictures of their CC because of how many people use the same preset and they all "look the same." I also feel there's less overall joy in sharing screenshots of the CC character due to limitations. Apart from the terrible haircuts in Inquisition, there was quite a bit of variety in the Inquisition (and Origins) CC and people were very proud of their character's uniqueness. It's harder to reach that threshold with Andromeda.

It's also that if you want a completely different character, the choices just aren't there. I can't make a blond that has blonde eyebrows to match. Ya know, some of us liked that concept . . .

And the faces are what they are, the female ones can be hard to work with and not end up with the same result over and over again. It's not that I hate seeing other people playing my character, it's that I can't stop playing the same damn face either. All for the lack of letting us pick and choose like previous ME titles, different facial features, so you can get a unique individual, not Eve #1, Eve # 2
- oh sorry wrong franchise, that's Sara #1, Sara 2 . . .

None of which are necessary to play the game so if the idea of Ryder clones bothers you you don't actually need to see any of them.  

I know for some people posting pics of their Ryder is half the fun and if they can't do that anymore because they freak out about clones then that is sad for them, but it is not really anything new.  Within race all Wardens pretty much looked the same, all Hawkes definitely looked the same and within presets all Shepards basically look the same.  

Like I said, yes the CC has problems, clones for me is not one of them. 

Maybe one way to fix the cc is to use the archive site to bail us all out:

Put out an independent CC that lets us make a character, a CC that has all the options from Inquisition. We then could upload results to the archive and reacquire them in game and have what we want. I remember DAO had a separate character creator before launch that people could work on, then bring the character over to the game. Why not do that here?

The difficulty in making a unique Ryder is a symptom of the problem (limited CC options), not the problem itself.

Though I would argue that there is value in creating something unique since people like to share characters with each other.

Another proof that BioWare is lazy and basically lied about difficulties with CC because of face scans. A new mod came out that allows you to use default Sara's skin texture for all the other presets. Link: www.nexusmods.com/masseffectandromeda/mods/133/?

Look how big of a change it makes! Especially since (I think) it contains default Sara's brows. Which means that brows are part of the face texture in all presets (they are literally painted on the face texture). If that's the case, then adding "complexion" slider with lots of different face textures would allow players to customize characters much more.

Now the question is - why we didn't get the ability to use default Sara's face texture from the start? Same for the skin tones. They said that pale skin tones were looking bad with the textures. So why not allow to switch face textures between presets? This mod proves that it works. Maybe we'll get more mods like that, so we can mix and match skin textures between presets.

Yeah but that's still a different preset