aeilkema posted at 2:22PM Wed, 02 December 2015 - #4241951

Imo, a step back, not forward.

It is not a step back, it is just that being Cycles a good/very good engine (differently from Firefly) it ruthlessly exposes the lack of high quality content and of sophisticated shaders (and lack of user experience). On BlenderArtists forums there are many threads which show what competent people can get out of humanoid figures in Cycles.