Filtering your sense of happiness through some quality of life lens is absurd if you think about it.

But that’s observably false. There are persons who don’t feel pain, and they are considerably more likely to seriously injure or even maim themselves than normal persons. That’s hardly “objectively better.”

Furthermore, the existence of masochism shows that some people prefer pain to its absence at least some of the time. Thus “Pain is real, and the absence of pain is objectively better” is just your subjective opinion.

Since we’re talking about subjective reports regardless, we may as well rely on the subjective reports of the people having the experiences rather than the subjective opinions of others who aren’t having the experiences.

If you are arguing for #1, I disagree. If you are arguing for #2, you should be more clear about why/how you keep using the word "objectively".

I would guess that each person has a different ideal level and variety of suffering (or responsibility, or challenge, or whatever you want to call it), for which their personality is best suited. We are so far removed from the challenges of the past that we don't know what the subjective experience would be like.