Funny when people are so convinced they have a point yet don't.
If you play Village+Nobles and miss out on +1 card compared to HG, that is much less of a loss than if you only have two terminals and only get to play one action that turn.
Insuring against the relatively devastating single-terminal hand -- and having more VP around to boot -- is the more powerful effect.
No one said something like "vastly superior", so you're arguing with a straw man. We know the two cards are close in power. They're well designed to compete with gold at $6.
But it is clear that one is better than the other in more situations, and that is why it's ranked higher. Nobles clearly changes the game more than HG does, and in more useful ways.
Just because you're missing the point doesn't mean there isn't one. I'll try explaining it again -- the rankings are fuzzy, weighed by reliability vs. impact, and everybody will value these things differently. Terminal collision is sometimes just a minor annoyance rather than utter devastation, and missing out on that extra +1 card is sometimes huge.
You say that Nobles is ranked better because it's better in more situations. That's a bad argument. Altar is ranked higher than Nobles on this list, but it is useful in fewer situations than Nobles. By virtue of its design, Nobles is a very safe, reliable card. Altar is more niche, but its impact can be huge in he right circumstances. I find HG to change the game more than Nobles does. By my own personal weighting of reliability vs. impact, I'd also put Nobles above HG overall. But I find Nobles to be more ignorable, because many boards have better sources of +action and cheaper/better sources of +cards.
If you're not saying that Nobles is vastly superior, you are certainly making it sound that way. At the least, you are claiming that it is
clearly better and
clearly more game-changing, which is absolutely more than should be said for Nobles. It's not clear, it's fuzzy. It may be better (I do think it is), but not by a lot.
As for JoaT vs. Sea Hag, I don't think either is ever ignorable, but that doesn't mean they are bought every time. Whenever JoaT is on the board you have to make sure your strategy is fast enough to compete with simple double-Jack. When Sea Hag is available, you need to find a way to deal with it and/or use it yourself.