Felicia Day tackles the ME:A Character Creator...

Maybe it's bad lighting. 

DAI had horrible defaults and assets, but an amazing ability to create unique looking characters despite that. I've made probably 10 different looking female elves.
There is a place for unibrows and atrocious hair styles, but not all brows and hair styles need to be monstrous.

MEA has much better defaults assets (at least for female), but it's impossible to create unique characters.
#4 clones:

Head SHAPE is a head SHAPE. It's just an overall shape of the face, where you can still completely change eyes, nose, eyebrows and lips. Let's not compare head shapes to presets

If someone needs a good looking female I'd recommend using this template:


I've been using the face just swapped eye and hair color to make her more like female shepard. Looks really good in game though, actually looks pretty and not weird in cutscenes.

Certainly looks a lot better tha the default female ryder, I tried using her on my ng+ after using scott on my first playthrough but had to quit and make a custom face becuase she just looks so damn weird in cutscenes and certain lighting that it was killing my immersion.

The CC is such a joke. The hair shader for anything other than dark tones is clearly broken in terms of gamma. How anyone can play with anything beyond dark brown is beyond me. Bethesda have had a decent anisitropic hair shader since Oblivion 11 years ago! Indeed a lot of Skyrim hair mods that people hold as a high standard are based on very old assets. Apart from physics collisions it is an artistic failing and not a technical one. There's already a precedent for clipping in the game. If they were gonna outsource anything it should've been that.

Oh and those tattoo and make-up designs... I'm betting they just downloaded a set of Photoshop brushes called "Space Age" and called it a day. Nailed it there guys...

I don't think I've ever given a ponytail to any of my characters, but I know the feeling, there are very few hairstyles in Andromeda that look good.

The problem is unchangeable presets. If you like any of them, then you are fine, if you don't, then there is no alternative because these presets cannot be changed much, they are very rigid. And as there is no such thing as being universally attractive, then many people will be disappointed. As I said, I haven't seen a single attractive male face made in this CC. I am sure many people can make a face that they find beautiful but many simply cannot and not always because of lack of skill.

The reworked and updated Inquisition CC would be so much better. More complexions, more options for facial features and some extended ranges of existing sliders, better hair - there would be more ethnic diversity than in this one, this CC is actually stereotyping ethnicities, not making them diverse. E.g., the Asian people who live near the Ural mountains don't look like Chinese or Pakistani people. Their features can be adequately made in the Inquisition CC, but for this one people who want their character to be Asian will be forced to play Asian=Chinese with little control over the preset itself. 

Surprised she doesn't start the vids with "Hey bitches".

I've tried using like three characters made with this preset. Some people kept saying it was so pretty and amazing in the game, then she started making ugly faces and it started breaking the immersion to me. It's pretty annoying.

From what I watched, this one looks almost the same as the other three, but I guess my main problem really is the facial animations. Funny thing is, I really managed to get used to default Sara's face, and I find default Scott very handsome most of the time.

No offense to those who use and like it, but I really don't like this preset. Her head is small and narrow, and most hairstyles end up looking like an overlarge hat sitting upon her head. With this head, it's essential to use a short cut with bangs (and not Suvi's cut.) I believe there are only two such options. They're the only ones that fit her small head. This is no different than the OT CC, in which certain styles fit only certain headshapes.

If one really wants a good-looking protagonist, they have to dig through the options and see what's really possible. Keeping the alterations superficial is what creates all of these clones we see, most of which are meh. One also has to be willing to accept the limitations imposed by each preset and work within those confines. Again, this is no different than most CCs, and certainly not different from the OT.

The strength of this CC is that it's easy to get realistic, mostly attractive characters out of it. With work, they can look amazing, or "very attractive". The weakness is that certain features are non-negotiables, since they are part of the individual facial scans.

Can you show me two characters created using the same preset which, with hard work (by you or someone else) ended up looking very good (both of them) and very distinct from one another? It's ok if you can't, I'm not challenging you, I'm just curious because in my opinion, putting work in these presets makes almost no difference and they all end up looking the same and, in my opinion (and maybe that's just me, of course), bad.

It's not the best, but I still think this is the best female character I've made in an ME game.  Definitely not ugly by any means.

Not ugly at all, judging by these pics. Probably the most beautiful F!Ryder I've seen, and I've seen many.