I havent playex vtm in years(and id LOVE to play a Laibon game using kotek) but did everyone else spend time playing masquerade focusing on thier charaters, the story, and when necisary politics, conbat, and trying not to die? Im making sure i played the stories to thier fullest, since i never bothered HIRING A DESIGNER to decide if my manipulative toreador looked better in his tailored suit than my gangrel in his ripped jeans or my malkavian in his plain t shirt and such.
It's totally cool that that sort of stuff didn't interest you, but it does interest other people. If you ever saw V:tM LARPs (or really any sort of LARPing), more than a few players could spend inordinate amounts of time on getting some truly amazing outfits.
It just seems like they are wasting money. Want fashion? Cool, you spent several years adding it. Want to make money? Let gangrel start the game off. Nothing scarier than a naked dude with way too much body hair tackling you with claws out........
The flip-side is that you then give an impression of a dungeon-crawl game that's focused on stats and fighting, rather than immersing yourself in a character. Nothing less immersive than a badly-drawn Chicago filled with naked dudes. Get a bad rep and it's hard to claw back the players who've been put off.
In general, across MMOs, many players like visuals that make them unusual or unique. For every hardcore player who's like "No, I'll play the crappest-looking race with the jerkiest animations and the crappiest outfits because it gives me 0.3% extra spankocity and 0.1% extra punchification", there are plenty who like the looks. WoW, for example, had some interesting faction imbalances that were radically altered with the release of the Burning Crusade - the Horde got a "pretty" race.
The Secret World, as another example, uses microtransactions (and/or the tokens offered by your optional monthly payment) to let you buy the prettiest gear.
Certainly, you can go way too far the other way spending years arranging angels on pinheads, but a V:tM-themed MMO that launched without decent support for immersive roleplay and which cut corners so badly it was actively jarring is very likely to get a lot of people very annoyed. :-/
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