Those features are important, if your colleagues are using them. You don't want to miss an ironically winking emoji, or a gif showing that your colleague is getting slowly frustrated. It is hard enough to convey emotion and other metadata through text, but you should at least all see the same thing.
if your whole team is using IRC (or using nothing and choosing what to use) they by definition aren't using those "features".
Also, if you're relying on a stupid cat gif to judge your colleagues mental well-being (and you are concerned about their mental well-being), perhaps you need to spend more time talking to them and less time searching for dank memes.
