I applaud content creator that keep things simple.

Poser 8,9 and even Poser 10 are still 32 bit applications limiting RAM to 2GB, or 3 with a trick.

Keeping memory load under control while maintaining functionality and the possibility to use multiple figures in the same scene drives content creators to keepthings "simple" and most of all usable.

Poly count and texture size both eat memory.
Texture caching helps in lowering memory use.
Rendering with a lower Bucket size 32 to 16 to 8 or even to 4 also leads to lower memory use.

But stick to the "standard".

A Bucket size of 10 is???? Throwing resources out the door.
A texture of 2000x2000 is throwing resources out the door.

---

What I personally find are a complete loss of energy are specular maps.

Skin shines in all directions in the same way.
Skin is skin, and reacts to the light it is receiving.

To get a good and more or less realistic render all you need are:

Diffuse texture and a bump map.  Bump to get the impression of depth without actually doing soimething.
Or:
Diffuse texture and a normal map. Same as Bump map.
Or:
Diffuse textrure and a displacemet map. Here you tell the renderer that there are actually a lot more polygons....And you can add some real and fine detail to a lower Polygon mesh. => Brow hair with actual depth without modeling each and every hair. :-) Now that would require a extremely dense mesh. :-)

The future?
Find the common sense between polycount and displacement. 

(personally I abandonned bump maps some years ago, and never used normal maps in Poser.)

Poser 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, P8 and PPro2010, P9 and PP2012, P10 and PP2014 Game Dev
"Do not drive faster then your angel can fly"!