Tim,

Saved scenes [pz3] revert control back to the initial instance of a group/channel. This is something that is inherent in Poser, not ERC per say. The scenes must be manually edited to load as one would have hoped by saving. See, the scope that has evolved into what is now encompassed by ERC was not the intention of the powers that be, when they built version 4. They were just as surprised as the community was with EMC, the precursor to ERC (if not more, because they understood the theory behind it before anyone else knew what the heck we [Charles and I] were babbling about). They had no way of preventing something they didn't know would happen... users aren't supposed to disect the code and make the product better :). But take that last comment with a grain of salt, because full body morphs (FBM) and conforming figures were implemented, and this "problem" existed there, well before EMC or ERC.
ERC, being the re-utilization of code for FBM's, falls victim to the very same problems, because it [ERC] is a product of it [FBM]. The null, based on Mr. Taylor's findings, was built as a way to make something work... that should have already, but wasn't intended to. We can only work with what Poser will allow us to... Fingers crossed, this will be fixed in version 5 [I'm in no way insinuating that it will be, I'm just saying I hope it is].
As for it being rendered useless... I wouldn't say, that. You can still load multiple figures, independent of each other, and save poses to your library to rebuild a scene. And though it isn't the "be all / end all" solution, it's a step closer in the right direction...

-Rob
rbtwhiz.com