This is missing a key element of why most people don't ironman most games: avoiding repetition. An game of FTL is relatively short and heavily randomized. Xcom is fairly randomized, but I still think most people would be annoyed to crash and burn near the end, just to have to play the whole campaign again to see what happens. To play something like an rpg on ironman seems like pure misery though: you'll spend the majority of your time killing the same slimes over and over.
