Most serious flight simmers, real life pilots or even those who wish to learn would like to have confidence that they can safely get a glance of how the real deal operates and not just any simple “game plane” you also have a lot of student pilots that use these sims for metal knowledge practice.
Who cares, let people play however they want. If someone wants to hop in a Cub, press the auto-start button, ignore ATC and just go do whatever they want, how does that effect you in any way whatsoever?
Maybe you are here for the things you listed, but not everyone is. Let people enjoy things the way they want without judging them.
I see, this forum hasn’t changed one bit 
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Because it was some people’s dream to become an airline pilot. For various reasons, this is not achievable in this lifetime. The technology is now available, so there is no reason why everyone can enjoy the best of the artificial world. To each his own as they say.
Me personally, I want both a study level and a less serious option.
For starters, I’m defining study level as something that closely mirrors the real thing. Most switches will do as they are labelled and avionics are as close as possible, keeping in mind this is a computer game and not a multi-million dollar systems trainer.
As a private pilot, I use the sim for mental reps when the weather is not supportive of me flying or when I’m preparing to fly a route I’ve never flown before. No simulator is the same as actually flying, but the terrain features are close enough that I’m able to spot any gotchas before I get in the air. In this scenario I would like an aircraft that is as close to real life as possible. Someday I may even find the time (and money) to get type rated on larger jets and it would be nice to be able familiarize myself as best as possible prior to spending my cold hard cash. Again, the sim is not the real thing, but the more realism there is the more useful it can be to pilots.
At the same time, I don’t always want to have to know how everything works in order to go fly. Sometimes I just want to checkout new places like Egypt or Greece and I don’t want to have to know/understand how everything works in order to take a flight.
So, to be greedy, I’ll take study-level airliners/jets as well as more arcade like aircraft to go fool around in.
I can agree with Irish, for starters it better to use less complicated models, if I can describe them like less complicated.
They can learn basics without too much in depth knowladge.
I know, they could learn like in real life, but who would take lessons before hop in aircraft?
Latter if they are that much interested in flying, take in depth simulated aircraft and learn rest.
I quite agree. I accept that the offerings like the FBW have their place but sometimes I just like to light the fires and fly.
People who like study-level are not some “tiny niche”. I think that people who only fly simpleton-arcadeplanes with a controller into houses while making brrrrrrr motor noises and would never pay more than 5-10$ for another simple to fly action-addon, are a niche - because these are not the target audience of a flight simulator… ;D
EVERY serious simmer, and also every Flight Sim YouTuber, flies only good payware with study level quality of excellence.
The sale numbers for good payware machines go into the tens of thousands, even if a payware aircraft costs 100 or 140 Dollar like the Majestic Software Dash8.
Real simmers are not even interested in these endless waves of cheap and almost zero quality arcade GA planes.
Wouldn’t flight siming be incredible boring without “study level” airplanes?
If i want to press strg+e, give full throttle and fly from airfield to airfield i could fly the planes in GTA around and had the same experience. Study level is a silly term, but without the challenge to understand the systems of an airplane and make them work, flight simulator would be not much more than an overly ambitious bing maps client.
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I do not really know where to start. Your post has a lot of speculation mixed with your personal opinion and eliticism.
Less complex planes sell very well in terms of numbers. Usually developers do not disclose their numbers but after a year of online flying I can clearly say that I see in the sky more of these simple GA than more complex offerring (e.g. DC6 is rare in my experience). Ask Dean from DC designs.
Your second assumption that “real simmers” do not even look at simplier GA is just ridiculous. First I do not really know how you personally define real simmers. That will be hard because a lot of people like to fly study level complex stuff and next day they just want to buzz around in something simple and enjoy the views. According to you they are not real simmers? This (flying study level with hours of planning and procedures and buzzing around for fun) has been stated by many different pilots here on this forum… over and over again each time when discussion about MSFS being a game or a simulator sparks.
Yes indeed an interesting and heated topic, I know 
With simple GA planes I mean the vanilla standard planes, not the fantastic Carenado M20 or Carenado Seneca, or the elusive and rare soon to be released Carenado Cessna 337 Skymaster which is high on my wishlist. (And the JustFlight Arrow is a wonderful plane too.)
But I have never seen any YouTuber ever using one of the stock planes ever again except when presenting complete overhauls and realism mods… like the JPlogistics Cessna 152 or DA40 DA62 realism mods and complete overhauls.
So I guess all people who really like flight sims are striving for the PERFECT simulation of an airplane (no matter if it´s a small prop or twin turbine or tubeliner) and no one wants it as “arcady and simple as possible”. 
I think the driving reason (specially when it comes to airliners) is the realistic pre-flight preperation and systems simulation
I would even risk going as far as to say that for many “study level” airliner gamers the manual flying is almost secondary. I dont often see Boeing or Airbus gamers talking about hand flying a lot. Of course they do so I just dont hear about it as much.
The attraction of study level airliner flying:
- Checking the weather
- Planning around the weather
- Alternates
Programming the flight computers (MCDU hardware)
- Fuel loads, Reserve fuel load, Pax weight, Baggage weight
- Data
- Init A
- Flight plan
- Init B
- Perf (Calculated thrust depending on rwy length, air temp, ac weight cimb thrust, cruise speed etc.)
- SID
- STAR
- Various autopilot functions like autothrust, autoland etc.
- In flight programming of the FMC (perhaps a runway change, win change which will affect the vREF etc. so the computers will spit out the correct figures)
This is just how the real world airliner pilots do it and I feel is the main attraction of study level. You can really truly nerd out on the computer systems on the Boeings and Airbuses.
These are of course just my musings from observing my friends who are into “study level” airliners. So yea, just thinking aloud. This why they are liked and its why the default just cannot cater to this need.
Its not my thing but the study levelers do have a lot of knowledge in case I get stuck on a Boeing or Airbus (which I fly casually) so to them I say - thanks
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I personally think it is a good thing to have many different types of aircraft with different learning levels in the sim. That is what makes it fun and changes the feel depending on what aircraft you choose for the day or for that flight. I started with a basic aircraft (C152 and then C172 spawning to runway) to get to know how to simply get a plane up and fly around without a lot of hassle. Now I enjoy flight planning (cold and dark starts) and more in depth settings in a plane and all the details that goes with flying it by the book so to speak. I would love more “in depth” airplanes added to the sim going forward, but I still do grab a simple GA aircraft and go sightseeing. Great to have choices!
A study level airliner isn’t really more action. Some real life airlines want the pilot to hit autopilot right after takeoff. Some airlines are allowing the pilot to take a nap in the cockpit during cruise flight. Where is your desired action in a real airliner?
I said nothing about action.
You don’t sound as if you know much about the tasks of a pilot and modern technology. Do a VATSIM /IVEO event flight (if you know what that is) from e.g. Paris to London in a FBW A320, PMDG 747 or FSlabs A320 in a fully controlled class x airspace and then tell me how much of the ATC instructions your autopilot could execute automatically and how long you could sleep as a pilot on this flight?
My point was about the aircraft itself. Sure, you can add some ATC on top but that has nothing to do with the value of a study level aircraft.
You are also using London to Paris. I mean, it’s kind of obvious that you won’t have a lot of downtime on a very short route. We could use New York to Copenhagen or London and wait for the time above the Atlantic. I’m already falling asleep on the flight from Frankfurt to Madrid.
The thing with non “study level” planes also is, when something goes wrong or does not work you never know if you do something wrong or if your plane is lacking realism.
For example i was doubting myself because every time i changed something in the flightplan using the mcdu of the default airbus the flightplan turned into spaghetti until i installed the fbw mod.
I would go so far and say sometimes a realistic depicted plane is easier to handle than to work around simplifications.
For me its simple to Learn. Love reading the manuals entering the data in FMC, FMS or MCDU, with full flight plan. Also circuit breakers are functioning…full checklist. More complicated planes to learn..I would happy to pay top price,from a non pilot point of view.
Edit “To learn as a hobby”
Would second this - there’s a level of confidence you get with study level aircraft that makes learning to use all the systems actually easier than if it’s not study-level - kinda counter intuitive I guess.