Postulating here:
When you learn to play the guitar or drums or whatever, there's a certain amount of basic knowledge you need to absorb about chords or whatever-you-need-to-learn-to-bang-on-a-drum... IOW, core skills.

Poser's different in that respect, particularly in some key areas. You can just muck around and start rendering and pretty soon you start to think: "yep, got it.. I know how this works, now"... this - my personal bee-in-my-bonnet - one sees most notably in the mat room.  It is the aCCEPTed way to create materials. Everyone I talk to say the same thing:

"oh, you know, I just put stuff together until it looks right" ...

and because so MANY use this "technique", it's become the way to do it. And these people all just patently ignore all the information that is available on this forum... because, for the most part, people only come in here if they need help with a problem. And creating a bogus material isn't a problem. Looks okay, walks okay, quacks okay, must be okay. Until someone else tries to use it. But by then, it's someone elses problem.

This forum is not the ideal venue for learning proper technique, because it's not the intuitive choice for "I wonder if there is actually a RIGHT way to make materials".
This apathetic approach - if it's not in the manual, it must not be valid/important - drives a large part of the mediocrity of what's available.

When someone decided that V4 didn't meet his basic ideas of what a 3D human should behave like and started creating a higher-quality model in Wing3D, he also realised that he was going to be up against popularity and high market profile. So what? Like Linux: market share isn't important: usability and stability is. And free is good too. And community rallying round the new developer is what needs to happen to keep Poser as a dynamic growing community alive.

That's what made Poser great in the first place... this is where the face_Offs and Travellers and Semidieus shine: innovation.

People will always buy stuff at the MP. People will always buy at Maccas (Aussie for the popular burger joint). But that doesn't have to keep Poser from staying interesting. Matmatic and VSS and The Node Cult and Antonia and Blender3D and people who like to muck around with better lights and materials and camera settings will take so-called "inferior" meshes or products or whatever and turn them into something useful and brilliant using................. imagination. So, who cares if the quality of said products appear to have leveled off? Who reading this actually uses products as they come? Not me... everything gets tweaked... and mostly it's shaders. Gotta make that mine... make it unique.

Otherwise, we're just all dressing up Barbie Dolls...

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks