What the reduction is doing

Notice the shape of it, because it is not a grudging exception tacked on afterwards.

The lightening is in the same surah as the command. It is given for ordinary human reasons: people are ill, people travel, people have work to do. And the instruction that replaces the long standing is recite what is easy, which is a phrase about capacity rather than about minimums.

None of this makes the night prayer small. It makes it something fitted to a person, in the state that person is actually in, which is exactly how the classical handbooks on dividing the night treat it as well.