Funny, I've never really seen anyone else say that.

Seriously?

Here are all the major outlet's reviews of Touch, since you seem to have been under a virtual rock that month :)

https://np.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/5gn6le/oculus_touch_review_megathread/

The only big difference is face buttons and a joystick instead of a touchpad

No. They are completely different ergonomic shape, the Touch controllers have a comfortable analog grip trigger, and capacitive sensors on all buttons, sticks & triggers for finger detection. They also have triple the battery life.

Read the reviews above, they cover it all.

the official Deluxe Audio Strap for Vive apparently fixes basically everything

It improves things, but it's $100 on top of the already $800 price. That brings it to $900 (for comparison, you can get a 3 sensor room scale Rift setup for $459).

since the Vive can ALSO do seated and standing stationary and 360 room scale

And so can the Rift, for nearly half the price!

it's really not a reason for me to get a less complete package with the Rift

In what specific way is this package, $450 cheaper than the HTC Vive with DAS, "less complete" than the HTC Vive?