
It takes more effort to make something usable by players, mostly because they get a lot more scrutiny because players can (and will) look at those assets up close for a very long time. Visual quality needs to be there for close inspection in situations like cinematics and high detail. If an asset or skin can't meet the minimum quality bar needed for players, it's still possible (and efficient) to use them for looks on much less-scrutinized NPCs, especially the background NPCs that are only set dressing and not (or minimally) interactable.
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