they would get a camera that hurts their hands for the best image quality.
In Marketing, there is a concept that tries to link features of a product to the overall perception of the product.
Each feature can be implemented with a certain quality (for example Dynamic range 10 stops vs 12 vs 14) and a curve describes how much increasing the features quality impacts the product's total quality.
I would argue that this curve is specific to certain markets. What you said may be true for some people. For them, the sensor quality curve goes straight on forever.
But for many others, it plateaus past a certain point. You don't get much of a benefit from 10 vs 100 fps, for example, if you only shoot astro photography, where exposure times greater than a second are the only thing you use. And dynamic range is nice, but past some point, it gets hard to find cases where more of it actually produces nicer pictures.
Based on their curve shape, features are separated in expected features and excitement features. Expected ones impact product receiption negatively if they are not present or present in a low quality, but don't do much for the product in terms of excitement past a certain point. Excitement features are the opposite.
What this amounts to is that without expected features, you automatically have a negative receiption but without excitement onces, your product is at least not bad.
I think the curves are different for different users. For me, ergonomics are definitivly a a expected feature. I wouldn't want a cramped camera like my old 600D again - but I don't need more than my 80D with the decent grip and Touchscreen offers. Same for dynamic range. The 6DII doesn't offer what I'd like to see at that price point, but my 80D has never disappointed me so far. When it couldn't keep up with a scenes DR, the picture would have been a poor picture anyway due to bad lighting.
More Frames per second or high iso Performance on the other hand would be exciting to me - my 80D is good enough for, but more would still be nicer, just because.
I don't think your Statement that people would accept pain as a trade of for Image quality is something that can be said about any group of relevant size. Just look at the Smartphone photographers - they can't even accept a little weight or size for that. Image quality is 'good enough' for them, or at least not exciting enough to compensate for the effect of size and weight.