This is absolutely why I left Java development. Maven in my mind is anything but simple. It was always frustrating to use - this was 2.0 mind you, so maybe things have become easier, but I doubt it.
Even the terminology is totally abstract and complicated. I built a big project for a well known bank around '05-'06 and we had all kinds of problems with maven - we just went back to ant.
I used to love Java in the late 90's/early 00's. I remember the resistance to doing projects with it - it was new, unproven, etc, etc - just like Language X today. I worked with some people who built some cool things with 1.2. The collections framework was great.
But, then all the enterprise stuff started creeping in and everything was configured with gobs of crap xml. Demos would be given where you could edit the configuration via gui tools, but none of the devs I knew did this. Everyone hand edited everything.
Things like maven with their overly abstracted naming and concepts and Spring where everything is 'wired up' by tons of xml are what ultimately drove me away from Java. I just wanted to spend my time working on features instead of configuring things.