Not really against your argument, but just as an added perspective from someone mostly neutral...

I think something that can be easily overlooked when tweaking gameplay is the way it impacts how the player feels they are doing things. In other words even if the gameplay result is the same, the player feeling like they looked and caught something and then picked it up matters. There's a whole genre of Telltale style games for example built around the idea of feeling like you're making important choices even when you aren't.