My old FT had standard length flippers, and that was challenging enough. I have played other machines with the lightning flippers, and that small shortening of the flippers does make a lot of difference to gameplay.
As you say ball times can be very short on FT, once that ball starts bouncing around off the slingshots, or dropping back down from the captive ball it often drains. That is part of how FT plays, it is a great manic fun game. I fully intend to own another one sometime in the future.