I dont want to intrude on this delightful bone of contention, but if it wasnt intuitive to use multiple buttons for things, then how do people play video games? Have you ever seen a kid play a shooter where you do a million things at the same time with different buttons? Now, imagine you had to do the same things, walk, aim, fire, reload, turn around, pull up a menu, etc., with only one or two buttons but the amount of pressure is what determines your actions. This would be incredibly hard to do if not impossible. Thats said, in those same games you walk or run based on how much you move the joystick, thus giving you both options with a single button.
So, tldr is you are all correct and everyone gets a trophy! Also, fwiw, I know plenty of seasoned pinball players that occasionally forget that upper flippers exist, so its not just for people that have never played before. Oh, and staged flipping is fine, but I suck at it. Nothing is more fun than dropping a cradled ball because you let off just ever so slightly too much. Fuck you Krang ramp!

I think it just depends on the person. Some people will probably take to multiple buttons faster than a single multi switch one and vice versa. Its an interesting conversation though. Having played a P3, I found it fairly easy to manage with the multiple buttons and flippers. Still haven’t found a game on that platform that really suits me yet.