Web Request Needs to Return Numeric Data

The Web Request control in O365 New responsive form will not return numeric or boolean values, only text. I opened a case and the tech replicated my result, so he sent it to the dev team. Their reply was that the functionality is not there and they have no plan to add it.

However, in this video of Euan's from 2020, it clearly DID work to pull numeric data:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WWFs1Y1f6E&ab_channel=NintexHangout

The "resolution" to my case was to edit the JSON directly to change the data type from "string" to "number", which works. So it's that simple, and used to work, why is it no longer working via the control? It's severely crippled if you can only use it to get text.

Specific use cases: lookup GSA per diem rates; lookup USPS street numbers, or even in Nintex's own help explanation - getting the number of pages in a book, or the year it was published.