>For example, the most common reason I want to connect to my home router is to see what devices are connected, what their IP addresses are, and perhaps make their DHCP leases static.

You sound like a Windows user who just found his way into Active Directory.

>in MikroTik it's buried under 3 levels of menu.

Its buried 3 levels deep in a hierarchy, the hierarchy you need to learn to operate the system. Quickset is Mikrotiks concession to "Oh wow some users at home are operating these tools". But the tools aren't aimed at home users.

>Then the default page is to create a new DHCP server - why would I want to do that? How many users run multiple DHCP servers?

Me for one haha.

>Every other home router.

Right I think this is your problem right here. "Every apple I have ever eaten I could bite through the skin" is a weird criticism of an orange.

The mikrotik gui is an abstraction of the CLI. Its really good that way so when you are recovering a mikrotik at a remote site you dont need to think too hard about where IP/DHCP Server is from the command line even if you are a gui native.