It's fine when you're playing in single player. However, the instant multiple people are involved, fair and balanced becomes an important issue.
The ability to shoot monitors with rings for pickup was removed to allow level designers the ability to place monitors in places that are mildly hard to get to. Otherwise, you could just shoot the monitor from halfway across the stage for a pickup. By requiring people to actually hit the monitor, it forces players into areas of a map that might be rather dangerous, by way of environmental hazard or by way of high amounts of player traffic.
The multi-thok was removed because it was downright broken and we all knew it. The reason it stayed around so long was because it was so damn fun to use. Basically, it warped deathmatch into a Sonic game because the multi-thok made Sonic unstoppable. Hell, Sonic is STILL the best player in DM under most circumstances without it. That says volumes to the power of the original move.
Remember, though, for each of these moves that is taken away, more moves that are more balanced are added. 1.09 contains a lot of minor nerfs for things, but it also includes a bunch of new stuff the player can do that WON'T warp multiplayer around its incredible power. The objective is to create a game that's at least mostly balanced, so things that are so absurdly powerful that it's necessary to win are going to be removed, and that's pretty much the bottom line. It just comes with progress that blantantly overpowered (and fun) things are going to get the axe.