I think the OP's problem with Poser is that the basic mode in the material room is useful for nothing at all. I find that any little tweak to any material requires hitting the advanced tab.

A somewhat more comprehensive basic interface would also be useful to advanced users looking for a quick fix.

A big problem for me in the advanced room is the absence of macros. If I could lump together a bunch of nodes that do a specific job into a macro that could be saved and loaded individually, it would save a lot of time and make a complex shader lots easier to understand.

At the moment it's like coding a complex program without being able to use subroutines.

Finally, a minor point: the material presets that come out of the box with Poser: some are pretty good, some are rubbish. I'm sure it would help everybody if we had one set of decent presets for basic materials.