In the words of my old flight instructor
“any landing you can walk away from is a good one”
Also
“a good pilot has the same number of landings as take-offs”
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No.
I mean it’s nice if you do, and we like to do nice touchdowns, but it is much more important to touch down in the touchdown zone than to make a smooth landing.
In fact if the runway is wet, shiny etc, then you really shouldn’t grease it on. Get those tyres to cut through that boundary layer of water to minimise any hydroplaning risk.
Ah, so this whole thread was kind of born out of the landing challenges and grading system? I think it is fair to say that the landing challenges and its grading system are not at all representative of how one should really land an aircraft – and quantify the quality of the landing.
I’ve yet to get an “A” rating for a landing challenge with a landing that I would rate as anywhere near good. Getting a good grade seems to require one to fly a much lower and shallower approach – a treetop approach – so you can make a “greaser” landing with wheels touching down right in the blue box.
In terms to realistic flight simulation, I would call that type of approach an “F” because and engine problem on final has about a zero chance of landing on the runway.
In terms of IRL on this topic, there are plenty of good articles on how real world pilots view landing soft vs hard. As many have pointed out in this thread, a “firm” landing is usually preferred over a very soft landing in an airliner.
Airliners land with a much higher airspeed, which means they run out of runway a lot sooner.
Airliners are heavy, which means they have more momentum and have a longer rollout.
You can feel it in the sim, and I would guess it s that way IRL, that when you touch done there is a period of time where you don’t have much control, and any forces that want to move the aircraft laterally are very hard to counteract. But once the weight is fully on the wheels and the nose gear has touched down, now you have control.
So I would think it also has to do with minimizing that period where there is little control.
Aircraft are designed to handle a fairly hard landing, but usually anything over ~1.6 g’s is considered “bad”.
But the bottom line is that it is generally agreed by aviation professionals that in order to achieve repeatable “soft/smooth” landings requires assuming the risk of making a long landing.
You can’t discuss these things without mentioning Ryan Air. LOL. For those that don’t get the joke, Ryan Air seems to have a culture which breeds pilots that land harder than the rest.
I am sure that $$$ is also a factor, because trying to achieve a very soft landing, if that doesn’t happen with touch down in the desired range, then its a go around. So the aircraft now has to burn a lot of fuel to climb and declare a missed – then have to redo the entire approach and have another go at final.
That is some serious bucks in fuel costs, and their is an associated loss of opportunity costs. Every minute a commercial airliner flies its current flight, is a minute the company isn’t generating additional revenue.
Then there are the costs associated with passengers being delayed, and the associated dissatisfaction and reputational damage. An airline carrier that doesn’t put a high priority on adhering to ops schedules is going to be one most travelers will avoid.
Here is a good write-up in aviation stack exchange on these topics: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/47422/what-is-the-typical-touchdown-vertical-speed-of-a-large-airliner
Looks at my MSFS logbook…oh. 
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I suppose I started the topic to gauge my expectations of what is realistically considered a normal landing by real life airline pilots. I wondered if I had been trying too hard to grease the touchdown in the simulator, when I hadn’t experienced much of this when a passenger. I found myself lengthening the flare to such an extent that the aircraft would either wander off the centre line, or as stated here, be forced into too shallow an approach to make the touchdown zone.
A period when you don’t have much control? Sounds dangerous. No idea what aircraft you fly, but that can’t be good…