dont get me wrong, Im not saying vertex and texture hacks are bad at all (I, myself cant texture, so Im nobody to judge texture hacks); what I mean is that people dont apreciate it as before, which I guess is a point we all agree with
I remember the day where people pumped out vertex after vertex and it was astounding. People like Beyond, Waffle, and ShadowSnake made some [censored]ing amazing things.
We also had people like ItalianStallion, Robz, and Mewtwo dominate the stage game. Now, we have a few pro modellers (LlamaJuice, Peardian, I'm looking at you two) who have worked either solo or with others to get their quality models in game.