The buffer list is shared across the entire emacs daemon. So if I have many files already open in different client sessions and start running buffer next commands, I'm cycling through a very long list.

Because you never ever start vim in a daemon mode, opening with -p creates a local list of files that you can cycle amongst. Additionally, the top line tells you which file you have open and which files are next and previous in the list of files you cycle through.

I've always just found it rather nice since I tend to jump around between the same handful of files while I'm working and hitting gt two or three times is often faster and more mindless than remembering the keystrokes to invoke helm-projectile-find-file and also the name of the file I want to switch to.