Right now, every area is being done to an alpha level. To us, alpha means that it works more-or-less as intended but may be rough around the edges. The gut instinct guideline says that if you would cringe but eventually shrug if it went out in that state, it's probably at alpha. We don't want things to go out in alpha state, but they need to get to alpha state first -- all of them. When working in an area that winds up as a 2D render, one could ask, "Hey, how long could you build things for that area?" The answer is
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Polygons and textures really aren't an issue for us, but time is. We have so many areas to build that we've found it isn't productive to bear down on individual maps in the same milestone that they reach alpha (barring special exceptions). As time goes by, our asset library grows and we find that we can flesh out or refine earlier areas, so a bunch of touch up work could get wasted.
That said, a time will come when all of these maps are rendered and Rob, Bobby, and I will go through every one of them and mark up every little thing we want fixed. Then Rob and Brandon will prioritize them and the artists will go buck wild, dividing their time between every map as circumstances warrant and time allows. I'm very confident it will result in a global increase in visual area quality and will address many of the head-scratching elements you see on our maps.
