It's not unusual for the "do many things" animation oriented programs to have pieces interconnected with one another, so like in Max a lot of the modeling is set up not just to build a plain model but more like to set up a system of actions any of which can be animated, which is certainly powerful but it's part of what adds to the complexity.

So sometimes because of this interconnected nature you don't necessarily escape the complexity by focusing on just one area of an overall complex program like that.

- Michael