Yes, you said they omitted ray tracing, when they straight up implemented the biggest forms of ray tracing, it's a stepping stone of what's to come. They clearly value it and want it.
The majority of enthusiasts do care about latest graphics technologies, because they are enthusiasts they like to run their games at max settings, hence why they do care about ray tracing, it's the ultimate form of max settings.
Enthusiasts care about ray tracing as evident by the huge number of mods enabling ray and path tracing in new and old games, whether through RTX Remix or through post process shaders.
Enthusiasts care about ray tracing, which is why developers are catering for them by releasing remastered games with integrated ray tracing like the Witcher 3, World of Warcraft, Crysis 1, Crysis 2, Crysis 3, Dark Picture Anthology: Man Of Medan .. etc.
Everywhere I go in enthusiasts circles I see people demanding more powerful ray tracing in this game or that game, I even see people demanding path tracing, heck, people still bitch and moan about the delay of ray tracing for the PC version of GTA V to this day.
RT is popular because of the reasons I listed above.
Guess what? This has been the case for most recent graphics upgrades, DX9 to DX10 transition, DX10 to DX11, DX11 to DX12. Nothing is particularly new in this regard with DX12 to DXR transition, it takes time until every implementation is stellar.
These last few years witnessed the whole gaming industry grinds to a halt progress wise, with most releases being based on last gen hardware, with dozens of remasters and superficial upgrades and very slow progress towards true next gen graphics, not to mention the devastating effect of COVID, but we are getting there, most new AAA releases are using ray tracing and even path tracing. Most of the new trailers for upcoming 2025/2026 games and beyond feature good use of ray tracing.