How do you store who has voted and what the results of the poll are without storing results on a server? Ultimately it's just the same sort of data as who upvoted and downvoted what, right?
I've got no idea of the legitimacy of the claim, it's just what the manufacturers claim. Likewise, they assume people want "thinner and lighter", presumably because that's what Steve Jobs said. It's all just trying to make the devices appeal to the mass market.
I don't think it's about the cost of the 3.5mm jack itself, it's about the space it takes up. "Thinner and lighter" as a goal means removing chunky things they don't think are necessary. Also waterproofing maybe?
Yeah I would think removing stress and trauma would fundamentally change the game into something else, but you could still reskin them to change the tone. For example stress could be your mana, and traumas could be your soul ascending, or something like that in a heroic fantasy setting; the mechanics are still the same but it doesn't have the same dark vibe.
It's fine to not want the dark tone, classic d&d heroic fantasy is much more of a feel-good vibe and there's nothing wrong with liking that. There are a lot of Forged in the Dark games (i.e. Blades hacks) with different themes, I imagine a load are much less dark!