That's a funny comment, but really I don't think this boils down to competent vs incomponent. It's a deliberate decision that game makers must make in an age of quest compasses. There's been a few posts in this thread about how some games that feature a quest compass, such as Fallout: New Vegas, don't really support playing with it disabled because of the lack of description in quest logs and dialogue.
Those things take time to write, so on one hand I can understand why game makers choose not to support quest compass-free gameplay. This is why I'm making a plea, in the hope that Cainarsky are aware that some of their players want to play this way - a way that ever player of Fallout 1 and 2 is accustomed to.
If the compass is an option, designing it as if it were not is incompetence, though.