I don't disagree, but whether you're even aware of the XEPs and how it's presented to the user, is a critical factor in viewing it as "confusing". Gaim for example only even tells you about XEPs if you dig into the server settings, and then it shows a very good job of listing all XEPs from either the server or client and noting which are supported by each in a table if you're far enough down the rabbithole that this info is useful. But for a regular user they just log in and it Just Works (tm).