I do that too and have no issue with it. I’m not sure what’s so hard about it to be honest, but maybe I’m just more familiar with the interface. Heck...if you can’t find the option just disconnect from the internet and I’m sure it will force you to go with a local only account ;-)
Probably, but my beef is that the option is not apparent to the uninitiated. On a UNIX/Linux machine, none of that is even an option (as far as I know - of course, there could be some Linux distro that has an online account tie-in). On OS X, they ask you to use or sign up for an iCloud account the first time you log into your local account, but provide a visible option to skip linking to iCloud. On Windows, unless you know the tricks or go through extra effort to look up how to do it, there appears to be no choice but to link to a Microsoft account.
That's my issue with it - not whether or not it can be worked around, but the fact that it has to be worked around and is not presented as being an option in the first place.