The thing is there are better thread workhorses, and when it comes to gaming the value for the gain isn't there. It has its limited purpose for those that need many, but not too many, cores, and want to game in not GPU limited scenarios, and don't care about price/performance. That's a niche of a niche segment.You're initiating a circular argument here. Defenders of Ryzen have (almost) always defended the slower cores by claiming that 'not everyone games' or 'not everyone exclusively games' so the extra cores are 'worth it'. Intel now has a faster, higher core count part. Simply stating that there are more expensive parts out there that are faster doesn't negate the original point: Intel now has a faster gaming part that is no longer as vulnerable to the 'but Ryzen does more work' argument.
My secondary argument is that value is relative; specifically if you get paid or not for your work. If you don't, then Intel may not have the best value for you. If you do, you can easily justify the extra cost because it will pay for itself. It's personally not worth it to me because I game on my gaming computer and I work on my workstations. However, I used a game/work scenario to show how easily I could justify building a machine that worked as well as it gamed.