I'm not sure how feasible this is, but after modelling something just now and realising how much i'd love this feature i thought I'd suggest it.
The idea or concept stems and takes its' inspiration from Zbrush. Each object has it's own object history, meaning that if i sculpt on subtool A in the scene, then go onto subtool B and start messing with that, and then realise i need to go back a few steps on subtool A, i can ctrl+z as much as i like without worry to the progress i've made on subtool B.
When an object is reverted to an earlier stage and you start making changes zbrush prompts you with a warning that if you continue you'll lose all previous data ahead of this point and be replaced with the new mesh data.
Hopefully this makes sense.
I would absolutely love this feature, i think it would totally set 3ds max apart from its competitors. Though the only reason why i think it couldn't work is that 3ds max users tend to have a lot of objects in one scene.