I agree, stating skin tones with ancestry only categorizes physical or cultural tributes within a geographic and cultural spectrum that is as fickle as cookie dough.
And as you mention, it is more practical in terms of narration and programming that this type of customization be left aside if it is not relevant to the story.
Basically this. I am a white guy from South Africa. Born, raised and lived here my whole life and have friends are far to many backgrounds and cultures to really count. I was raised in a very western way but had to learn and adapt to cultural norms of the country as I grew up.
When it comes to this kind of stuff, skin tone doesn’t always show how you were raised and what environment you were both born in or grew up with. Unless it’s used for plot reasons, most of the time, skin tone could either just be a customization option for peace of mind, or where your far flung ancestors were originally from.
For me its all very important…im using my imagination to play the game…if its a prebuilt and vanilla then just provide a picture but that seems like id just be playing some1 else and not my own story…
My MC’s almost never resemble me, and I don’t usually ever think about their ethnicity, so it doesn’t matter too much to me. I actually really like when the MC has a non-white set ethnicity; it gives the story more flavour, because the author will (usually) include a lot more details about traditions and stigmas, etc, fantasy or not.