That's exactly it, thank you! What worries me with the current one that landed is the gradient: because the arms are short and the spot is tight, the burden is on the booster to make very sharp corrections (especially on pitch) to get caught when there's literally a few meters left, with an increased risk at the worst time (no altitude, and structures around), as opposed to leaving the pitch as is and landing vertically. In other words: the possibility to screw a perfect launch by introducing irremediable risk in the last few seconds and meters.
Then again, I just watched the launch and that was the first thing that popped into my mind, and the first "design" that popped into my mind as I was replying to the thread, so not much thought went into it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27TvGDpPLNw
It will be interesting to see how these two approaches fare vs. one another.