Thanks for this thread, really :-)
Here is, what Poser needs to become, in order to get out of its *** -corner:
-A real good physical based render engine, or:
 including a plug in, that sends a scene right to Blender for rendering.
-Learning from Reallusion. Feet-floor contact for animations, controlling texture maps by morph parameters.
-Automatic morph projections from parent figures to child components/figures like clothings and hairs.
 Also important for Joint Controlled Morphs!
 (Poser does have a great Dependency editor. Why doesn't anybody ever mention this? Is anybody using it?
 Does anybody use the great morph brush feature?)
-Learning from DAZ. Introduce a way to add geometry to figures, without breaking morphs or rigging.
-Hair room and cloth room need a significant upgrade.
 Bondware is right about planning to upgrade the cloth room. Hope, they'll do it with the hair room as well, BUT:
 releasing Poser 14 without any of it, half ready is a red flag.

These things should have been addressed already years ago.
That it didn't happen is again another red flag, and a stong hint, that bondware just doesn't care.
Maybe they start addressing it now, that their margin is shrinking dramatically.