Flea Tinning

I recently patched up runes of magic and had a quick play. Given so many shiny things in the game, coming back after a break is a bit of a treat since you forget all the little things (and they had a few new things, like attacking santas!). Though I quickly start to remember (this happend on a return to wow once, as well).

But the thing is, they patched in one click gathering. Previously you had to click on a node again and again, every five seconds, to get stuff out. Now you click once and it keeps gathering till the nodes empty.

And the weird thing was, I was kind of excited about it!? Like it's an improvement? I was going around using it and kind of going 'yeah!'

And that's BS.

I mean, if it had been there from the begining, I wouldn't have found it exciting. It'd just be standard.

And this is what I call 'flea tinning'. Ever heard of how if you put a flea in a tin with the lid on, it'll learn to jump only as high as the lid...for the rest of it's life? Here it's similar for the player, but after having learnt to jump only so high, breaking out of that previous pattern is 'exciting'. Even though it was an entirely arbitrary limitation and if it hadn't been there to begin with, there would have been no excitement.

It's something to think about in terms of mmorpgs and whats 'exciting' about new patches or buffs to classes. Is it really exciting, or did they just get you used to a constraint then remove the constraint?