Titlepage resets the page count

I was not aware that \titlepage command resets page counter. Have no idea why LaTeX works this way but in result \setcounter{page} is ignored no matter where one inserts it in the source code.

It somehow works if \setounter{page} is executed after \begin{titlepage}... (or \maketitle which uses titlepage) but page number for titlepage is always 1.

Worse: definitely LaTeX would be more user-friendly if it would write such brute actions as page counter resets to log file.

Simple fix is to redefine titlepage environment. For example below is a simplified titlepage environment from article.cls:

\renewenvironment{titlepage}
    {%
      \if@twocolumn
        \@restonecoltrue\onecolumn
      \else
        \@restonecolfalse\newpage
      \fi
      \thispagestyle{empty}%
      %%\setcounter{page}\z@
    }%
    {\if@restonecol\twocolumn \else \newpage \fi
    }

The unwanted \setcounter was commented-out in the code above.