I personally disagree with you about the NMS comparison to Starfield. NMS has a far more simplistic character creator than the fairly simplified (compared to previous Bethesda games) character creator for Starfield.

I'd rather compare Starfield to something like Fallout or Skyrim, both of which (especially Skyrim) look like they had better character creators than Starfield. Even without mods both those games appear to have better character creation than Starfield does. Hopefully Starfield's character creation preview was incorrect and that we will have the same if not better options available than those other games, and failing that hopefully modders will be able to return some of that functionality to it....sadly though I fear this will not be the case. But we shall just have to wait and see.