I have to say that I don't think any program really fits the work methods I have always wished for.  I've been at this for a while, so understand that I don't want a "make art button"...  I'd like to have a "make what I am thinking button", but that is an entirely different wish (and one that I'll defend).

I started film making with kit-bashed mecha models using sets scavenged from various toys and spray-painted styrofoam packing frames with Christmas tree lights for illumination.  I always felt a different part of my creativity being used when building the models vs. animating them.  Having to fix a model mid shot would not just cause an animation glitch but would snap me out of whatever mindset I was in at the moment...  So I'd work a few nights a week cobbling some robot together or kitbashing a new weapon or armour piece.  Then on weekends I'd set things up and hopefully shoot a few seconds of mindless robot fights.

When I got into CG it was with the intent of making my own short films with my own environments and designs.  I was planning on using "human" characters, and - screw the purists - never saw the point in modeling and rigging a realistic human figure.  Initially, people were an afterthought for me.  They were there to give other things scale, or to add life to an otherwise purely mechanical image.  I liked the idea of saving a character to a library and the ease with which a number of custom characters could be created and kept at the ready...

What I like, in theory, about Poser is there should be a division between low-level tweaking, rigging, and posing/animating a figure.  People using high end tools in production tend to work on something for a short time and then they move on.  If perfect realism is the goal of a project, you need access to all aspects of your production at all times.  I don't want that.  I want a set of figures realistic enough to be re-useable characters, and if I get them looking right I never want to have to worry about them again.  I think many of us have a similar notion, that someday we will have the figures and settings and accessories of our imagination and then we will be able to start telling our stories.  I don't want to see a figure's joint parameters or weight maps any more than a film director would wish to see an actor's x-ray.