I'm in the 'devil's in the detail' camp too but it's a balancing act, as others have suggested, with how you achieve that detail.

I tend to break it down into meta-shapes that you achieve with the mesh itself (including musculature and major tendons and large skin folds that might move with body-part posing), fine shapes that you'd look to displacement for (finer folds, creases, wrinkles and larger moles etc), and ultra fine details handled with bump maps (skin pores and very delicate wrinkles/creases). 

How far you go with any of this stuff at any given level of detail is going to depend on what you think potential end-users really want from a figure, as well as what you have the time/capacity to create. Personally right now I'm looking for as high a level of realism and flexibility as possible so including detail in elements like nails, ear, inner mouth and eye parts in the mesh itself are a must. I'd like a mesh that allows for fairly fine musculature and major tendons, but which can also be smoothed for less defined looks. The renders you've already posted of your male figure look pretty good to me in many respects. Animators will have a very different view.

Mesh is very important to me as it's so vital in terms of how it interacts with varied lighting states. Too little detail and the realism can easily break down - there's only so far you can go with a light mesh and texture maps.

A higher density mesh lends itself toward better shaping flexibility - if the polys arn't there you can't shape them. Of course, if the aim is to make a fixed or limited shape figure with few morphs you only need the polys where they're needed for that specific purpose. Strategy.

 

PoserPro2014(Sr4), Win7 x64, display units set to inches.

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