The data that goes into the plot is unrelated to it&#x27;s visual complexity.<p>The &quot;problem&quot; is that ggplot also takes care of the transformation&#x2F;reduction step for you.<p>For example, a KDE plot can source potentially a limitless amount of data while still generating a very simple plot. Likewise for most smoothers.<p>However, if I have to produce the kde&#x2F;smoothed line myself, I lose almost all advantages of using ggplot (I have to manually calculate the visual density, scaling and attaching labels is another PITA).<p>On top of that, as other have said, ggplot really struggles already with thousands of entries. A simple 5x5 faceted scatterplot with ~10k points might take seconds to render on recent hardware. When I plot data interactively for exploration, I might do this hundreds of times a day. I lose all the convenience just in the time wasted for rendering.