zombie84 said:

To be fair, while Lucas and co. definitely skimped on the sets, they more than made up for it in the visual effects. ROTJ was never really topped in that department until Independence Day came out a decade and a half later, with digital technology to boot. It was a spectacular film, but for different reasons than ANH and ESB, which had great locations and more than a few incredible sets. Of course, ESB still is the highpoint of the visuals, with great sets, locations and photography (Hoth, Carbon Freezing, Dagobah) as well as great visual effects sequences (Imperial Walkers and asteroid chase).

The special effects were showy but often sloppy in execution to the point where they often detracted from the story.

When they were making ANH (back when it was just Star Wars) the sand crawler on the horizon was something they couldn't do as a detailed shot with the time and money available to them but that simple black shape is much more believable than the model shot of Jabba's barge with the badly animated out of scale single marker pen drawing on deck (the SE version is only a small improvement). It doesn't match the really well made physical location set/prop.

If they couldn't do it in a convincing way they shouldn't have bothered and just wiped to the barge already at the Sarlacc Pit.

With the first two films they really tried to get the effects right and when they made mistakes they were often difficult to spot on a first viewing so you were never thrown out of the story, I hated that barge shot in 1983.

Volume of effects is not the same as the story being served by effects.

With ROTJ they seemed to think if they shoved lots of stuff in motion on the screen people wouldn't notice A) the quality of the stuff and B) if the story was served by it and for the majority of viewers they were right.