In general, with some applications people hit the limits pretty quickly with PNG and JPG. In our use-case, the EXR format essentially meant a rendered part of the source image wouldn't be "overexposed" by the render pipeline, and layers could be later adjusted to better match in Resolve. Example: your scenes fireball simulation won't look like a fried egg photo from 1980 due to hitting 0xFF.
If you've never encountered the use-case, than don't worry about the aesthetics. Seriously, many vendors also just don't care... especially after they already were paid. Best of luck =3
0xFF is 8-bit. PNG supports up to 16-bit. It always has. Plus, PNG now supports full HDR so the fireball won't look washed out.
I think your experience is with some tool that made bad PNGs. That is a problem with the tool, not the format.