Sure if it made a major increase in actual security as seen in the wild but that is just not the case.
Actually there have been multiple breeches that were made possible by identifying people's usernames due to overly descriptive error messages. Knowing the password is expired gives social engineers even more information to work with. You are correct that there is a balance between making the system secure, and making it usable. This is usually addressed by making the password reset process easily identifiable, and straighforward to use.
Passkeys are the next protocol that is supposed to save us from the hassle of remembering username and password, or dealing with expired passwords, and whilst they do have their own problems, they're a definite step away from the frustrations you've described.