Personally, I think Poser models are WAY more versatile and flexible than people give them credit for. After posting at DA for 10 years, people have been claiming they recognized something I made straight from the tiny thumbnail, way before they see the actual render. Chances are I have developed a specific character and rendering style of my own. Since 2013 I have been using Dawn almost exclusively, and I only have about a dozen clothings and morphs for her - but my characters look nothing like the default Dawn, and people in general don't recognize what figure I used. For example, CatsEyes was created entirely inside Poser with magnets and the Morphing Tool. It is so easy to customize a character in Poser that there are many cases where I create a whole new face and/or body shape just for a single render.
The bottom line is that Poser is just a tool, and we can go a long way from the stock figures using just what comes with it. The tool doesn't make the artist - we cannot blame stock figures for what people do with them. The art is to take these tools and make the best out of them. This is one point where DS doesn't work for me - it lacks something like the Morphing Tool, and I can't go far without it. Just like stock figures, I see pose presets as great starring points for where I want to get. It's very rare when a stock pose or character material can be used without editing of some kind. Sometimes just a little change can go a long way - at least to me. For example, adding a bump map to a hair model makes a world of difference in the final render. So much that sometimes people will comment on that alone. The devil is in the little things.
I left Renderosity and joined DA because I wanted to grow as an artist. I have all my background in computer science and I needed to get involved and interact with artists from all kinds of media. That's how DA has become my new home ever since. I would not have progressed as much if I would stick to a mostly 3D community like RO. I have learned a LOT from the artistic community feedback, be it good or bad. Over 10 years have passed, and I feel like I have finally grown as an artist, and the feedback I get nowadays is more positive than negative. When I started, all I could do was to render stock models and use pose presets, but like in any other media, that was just a start. Most 2D artists I knew started with imitating someone else's style, and I think this is the equivalent of using stock models like we do. The thing is not to settle with that.