We need to stop confusing "better" and "good".

I've seen the same set of comments play out countless times here, and I'm guilty of it myself. One person says the update to fifth edition improved martials, while another retorts that they're still dull and limited. Or someone laments that fighters are much less capable than they were last edition, only for another to reply, "but they have weapon masteries now, they're better than they were earlier in this edition."

The issue is that people are talking past each other because they're confusing improved (comparative adjective) with good (base adjective).

To make things worse, "good" itself has multiple meanings. For some, it means "able to contribute equally under the right circumstances" (which all martials arguably are). For others, it means "having anywhere near the number of in-combat choices a wizard does" (which no martials do). That last one is a useful example of the different forms of good, since for one person that might not be a problem as they think all martials should be simpler while a different person might think it's not good since they like the "tactical, learned blademaster who wins via selecting from the vast array of sword techniques they have mastered" archetype and are sad 5e doesn't have any options for it.

It will save ourselves (other than readers who either don't care about this kind of discussion or already do this) a lot of time if we pay attention to whether someone’s talking about relative improvement or absolute quality, and clarify our metrics for what quality means. After all, we're all discussing to ultimately achieve the same thing, a fun game with friends.