It being easier or harder doesn't make them stop listening feedback. They listen to the community and that plays a part in the direction the game takes, both visually and gameplay wise.
You are wrong. The dude you are trying to argue with is right. Modeling a face takes much longer. When you even move one single polygon vertex around, whole stuff fucks up, you have to remodel the face, and that is called "retopology". Creating a face is annoying enough, and you have to rebuild it (retopology) because of the massive polycount. I dont know how character development works since I do hard surface modeling and work on environments, but from what I know, you have to rig the face again to make it work as well. Possibly match the mo-cap data again as well. I can be wrong, but its the bits and pieces I have heard during courses.
Shit is rough. Even the simplest thing takes time. You just think game development is too easy, dont you?
There's a reason why DMC's creators said a character sometimes takes up to 1 year to make. For props and environments, sure, its kind-of easy, but theres a reason why they say "3D character artist" is probably the most difficult art job in the game industry