Think about it, when have you ever played any kind of game or RPG where all the character creation does is change the player's appearance? I do get some people like that but I've noticed a very consistent pattern of more customisation options usually means the devs have spent too much time on that rather than the gameplay and story.
There's also the other factor of these little background tag stories they try to introduce like with religion or lifepaths. They gives you the impression this is suppose to be some kind of meaningful choice but in reality all it does is change a few dialogue responses and has very little effect on the main story itself. It feels like there are certain mechanics I see regularly getting shoehorned into genres that don't belong in it and they're meant for a certain type of person that isn't really that interested in gameplay and more interested in cosmetics and general customisation.
People’s approach to character creators usually falls into one of four categories:
I’m going to put myself in the game
I’m going to spend hours making my perfect character for my RP
I’m going to make the most hilarious abomination I possibly can
I’m going to make some minimal changes to the default model, because I don’t care that much
I’m usually in group four, but that doesn’t mean I don’t acknowledge that the other groups exist. As u/GrundlePuncher said, if the devs were already making a lot of different NPCs, it’s not exactly too much effort to give the player those assets to mess around with, and it absolutely does enhance the game for lots of people.
As for the rest, I know what you mean with life paths, but I don’t think it’s a problem or indicative of wasted dev time if you give a few blurbs that help your player make choices about their RP, or their stats, or a few sentences of dialogue that reflect their character’s alleged competencies.
Maybe I’m just not playing the right games to understand your complaint. The closest I come to getting what you’re saying is with Solasta, which I was never able to get into because everyone seemed to have the same voice and accent, and also because the way the dialogue choices work feel less like you're playing a character and more like you’re choosing which of four mouths to say “the snarky line” or “the patient line”with… but I didn’t think “oh man, if they hadn’t let me choose life paths here, the writing would be so much better because they’d have had 20 extra minutes.” I thought “man, this writing has a bit of wittiness-disease, and it’s weird how they chose to give each possible dialogue choice to a different character.”
I really can’t believe I forgot that one.
Honestly I fucking get that because it is the argument of if I'm going to stare at a character the whole playthrough it may as well be a hot girl.