It makes it more realistic in my opinion.
Mr. Grizz may be ambiguously evil, but he doesn't strike me as cruel or vile. Even he knows that there's times where you should stop working and go have fun.
There's also the fact that salmonid migrations are canonically stated to only happen periodically, though in fairness they probably added that detail because of the schedule rather than the other way around. Though it does make sense from a world-building perspective that the Salmonids wouldn't be on the move all the time.
Part of me really hopes that it's a meta-build-up to some huge event. The Sunken Scolls say that Salmonid migrations used to be heralded as harbingers of the apocalypse, and if they're lasting for longer and longer, that could be a sign that some serious **** is about to hit the fan. I doubt it's the case, but it would be awesome.
I see the schedule as a necessity which few bring up. Every time Grizzco opens up It becomes insanely more difficult to get into normal matches. There simply aren't enough players to keep everything open without being stuck in waiting room hell.
I've definitely noticed a massive difference in matchmaking times when Salmon Run goes up. Generally I only have to wait 5-10 seconds for a match, but if Salmon Run's up I can expect to wait well over 30 seconds, sometimes over a minute. I'm personally glad that the schedule exists because it makes sure that people actually spend time playing the Ranked and Regular modes that are the actual focus of the game, rather than having the game turn into 'Salmon Run and some other modes that no-one plays anymore'. It's all very well to say "I paid for the game, I should be allowed to play it however I want", but that applies to other people too. And if there are people who can't find Regular or Ranked matches because everyone's too busy playing Salmon Run, then those people aren't being allowed to play the game the way they want. Sometimes compromise is necessary to fairness. That said, you could also probably argue that if Salmon Run was available all the time then people wouldn't horde it so much (if you'll pardon the expression).
The fact that they're still increasing the length of the sessions (I think there's a 30-hour one coming up) makes me wonder if it was just a temporary measure while the game's user-base was still growing. I've definitely noticed a huge upswing in English-named players in my lobbies lately. I live in Australia and it used to be that you couldn't find a lobby with less than 6 Japanese players in it, but now it's getting down to more like half-and-half, slightly favouring English names. So the user-base has clearly expanded pretty well over the last few weeks, and if it's getting big enough to feasibly support all the different modes that might be the impetus for lengthening the Salmon Runs.
It might also have been a case of just keeping the other modes alive in the early days when the novelty of Salmon Run was still commanding everyone's attention. As people get more used to it and the novelty wears off, people probably aren't going to obsess over it as much, so they'll be able to have it active for longer without Regular and Ranked modes drying up so much.
At the end of the day, I don't have a lot of calls on my time so I'm probably not the best person to opine on the schedule. But it's nice that it keeps all the modes alive and well, and the Runs happen so regularly that I find it hard to be too annoyed when they're not available. I might have had more of a problem if they only happened 1-2 times a week rather than the 3-4 times a week we actually get, but as it stands I don't have a problem with it. I understand why it would annoy people with more cluttered schedules though.
