I'm not expecting anything too fancy but I'd be heavily disappointed if character customization turned out to be something like "choose from 1 of 4 heads". I would also like long wildly banana looking blonde hair.
Since white scars like to run around helmetless too it seems to correlate with facial hair...maybe the admech priests designed the helmets for beardless and bald Marines only? I can imagine it being annoying blocking out the view on your sensor feeds in the corner of the eye or get caught between neck and helmet seal ^^
Any online game that misses the point that "Dress up dollies" is damn important, shall miss out on ALOT of money. Polishing and blinging out your dude is massively important, A simple transmog mechanism on warcraft added tons and tons of joy into the game and made people grind old content for months.
I think some people have trouble coming up with good facial features considering most space marines never remove their helmets in battle, and there's never a lot of "unique" faces in artwork and such things, its usually either 1. Bold Bald guys with no facial hair or 5 'o clock shadows 2.Hairy space wolf with beard and big fashionable viking hair 3.White scars and their Mongolian hairstyle 4. Salamanders and their great black baldness (And crazy eyes) Also do keep in mind that chapters usually have specific (Or a specific set of) Recruiting worlds, so their space marines will only look like the sentient humans on that specific world, hence why most white scars look ethnically steppe Asian in appearance. Also: I was actually curious about this once, and from what I could tell its that some space marines (As foolish as it sounds) Like to be face-to-face with the enemy, and it makes them look "brave" or something like that, or it could be the helmet just gets in the way sometimes.
Funny you mentioned EVE on this topic. When CCP implemented the extensive Character creator (When I started playing, they had a much different way to make the portrait for your capsuleer), they planned on making it possible to walk on stations and meet other players there... but the community did the only right thing. They told CCP they don't want to play fucking space barbie and that they should use their money on adding to the actual game, because almost no one would ever use the walking on station option, because that would just be a fancy menu. And I completely agree. Even though I am a roleplayer, even in EVE, that would be such a waste of money for a game that is a niche product anyway, and no one would just play it because of Character customization or walking on stations. Same with this. I don't fucking believe anyone would find the game more fun because he created the face underneath that helmet. Hell... in many Games I even had it that I took off my helmet and thought "Woah! I forgot that the guy under the helmet looked like this."
I would want facial customization as an extra bit of frosting on the cake Considering Ork facial customization would basically sum up too "Do you'z 'ave metal bitz or cybork partz on yur face or en'nee scars you'z wantz ta show?" With possibly head sliders for width and length if they want to get fancy with it. That and each clan should probably have clan specific customization options
I remember reading the space wolf novels and they talked about the helmets messing with the marines senses, but a couple chapters later, The are fighting chaos cultist that have weapons that should not even chip at a space marines armor but still managed to kill the Sergeant cause no helmet.
Space Wolves have a sense of smell that goes beyond the usual for SM and that which the Auto-senses of a helmet can provide. Though SM power armour helmets do provide extra's with their auto senses, like thermal vision, they can screen out a lot of details plus they are not completely immune to accidental or intentional interference. There is also the fact that the onboard HUD can swamp the user with too much information, this happened with Kharn during the Shadow Crusade. So why would an SM take off there helmet? Because it can interfere with their senses preventing them picking up on things. Auto-senses can be jammed to the extent that the SMs innate ones become superior. Plus the helmets HUD can swamp the user with too much distracting information that the user is better off without the helmet. Reasons to keep it on? It gives their head protection from enemy fire, or melee blows. It protects the user from hostile environments. It has Auto-senses. And it has a HUD.
