It's redundant for extraction. For creation (-c) where you can list many files, it's just a choice some unix developer made to allow the destination file to be specified independent of order. I think there'd be some awkward edge cases otherwise.
Anyway, adding verbosity to discourage operating on static files and prefering being on a pipeline could be considered a feature.
Anyway, adding verbosity to discourage operating on static files and prefering being on a pipeline could be considered a feature.