Yes, it is a factor, but...
When I started shooting film about 8 years ago, I was experimenting a lot with developers. Later I acquired a used enlarger and started to making prints. Then my focus started to shift to worrying about paper.
At some point I realized, partly due to reading interviews and literature by people like Michael Kenna, Bruce Barnbaum and Anton Corbijn, that this has little to do with making a photograph.
It is all about the subject, to capture the gesture, the quality of light etc. These guys shoot Tri-X or TMAX and they develop in HC-110. They moved past the stage where you worry about developer early in their careers.
There's two different points here, I agree about keeping it simple sticking to maybe 2 films and one developer, that's largely what I've done for the last 50+ years but there have been step changes occasionally when films have been discontinued, or I felt it worth trying a different film or developer.
For years I used FP4 in ID-11 (D76) I also usedb HP5 in Microphen but that was for concert photography and I switched to XP1 and pushed that and later XP2 in C41 chemistry but taht's not mainstream. I tried Adox Borax MQ and found that gave me better fine grain, speed (shadow detail) tonality and sharpness so switched, this was an improvement that others saw, I was mixing chemistry for two other commercial photographers, we all used replenished developers.
After 20+ years of using FP4 and ex-Government FP3 as a teenager, I wanted a cnage in approach, a re-think, I tested a Agfapan 100 & 25 and FP4 in a few developers and settled on Rodinal and AP100 35mm, 120, & 5x4 and AP25 in a roll film back with my 5x4 camera. There was a step change in negative/print quality, the finest grained prints I'd seen in the late 1980s with a 100 ISO film were made with AP100 and Rodinal and that's low Sulphite when dilute.
I needed a back-up film as sometimes AP100 and later APX100 were out of stock and soon after the new Tmax films filled the gap perfectly, after testing same dev times but half the box speed gave me inter-changeable results with equally fine grain and sharpness. So when Agfa pulled out Tmax became my main film, I tried it in Pyrocat HD and found it was like Podinal on steroids, a marriage made in heaven.
But then Tmax availability was extremely poor when I was living abroad and I was surprised how easy Fomapan was to find, that's Turkey and then South America, so I bought some and tested it then bought more, I'd also found a couple of rolls of Delta 100 . When next back in the UK (about 10/ years ago) I stocked up with 120 & 5x4 Delta 100, 120 Delta 400 and 5x4 HP5 which I use for hand-held LF work.
I think a second point is once you have sufficient craft you can quickly test, evaluate, and use any film. I've used quite a lot of EFKE 25, Fortepan 200, as well as the Foma films mentioned earlier and there are differences mainly with the Fortepan 200 but only with grain in smaller formats, not an issue when I only use it for 10x8"
I did this only to compare... not to say Pyro developers are better than conventional. Funny how some people easily get their knickers knotted so easily. If anyone wants a good read on developers and effect on tones, look for Phil Davis' article he did years ago in PT magazine.
That's implicit in your post
I'd actually say I'd be equally happy using replenished Xtol or Pyrocat HD if I didn't have a choice, although the Pyrocat HD negatives would be slightly easier to print, that's from rather a lot of experience .
Ian
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