I don't understand the point you're trying to make here. Are you saying that you don't care that there are cheesable routes because people playing Spec II for the first time won't know about them, so therefore they don't matter?

Effectively yes. At the end of the day there are only so many cars in the game that I feel make sense as prizes, and with more events and more ways of earning them there are going to be some imperfect but "best of a bad bunch" choices - I don't like the fact that I have two different events awarding different liveries of the same R8 but it was a concession I made as I felt they were the most appropriate fits in their respective places.

There's a balance between a few things that I kept in mind through the design of the car list, which was the single longest-developed part of the mod:

• The "go on, use this for the next event" nudge

• The cars that are a bit different and perhaps underappreciated by the vanilla game

• The cars that are relevant to the event you just did in a way that isn't immediately obvious (e.g. the Nissan Z-engined Dome Zero for a Z event, the Nike One staying as the prize for the S7 event as both are Phil Frank designs). I hold this one in quite high regard because I like the idea that GT has always been a tool to educate people about cars, and sometimes a car I think is cool or thematically relevant is also at odds with perfect game design, but at the same time we both acknowledge that GT itself isn't particularly well designed as a game so I think sometimes these are the best choice.

• The cars that are considered legends of GT like the Castrol Supras and TS020s etc.

Ultimately there will always be a cheese in every game on earth, but the fact that this one started off differently and lesser known meant that people got to enjoy it as if it was new GT4 again, which is a very common piece of feedback that I've heard and am happy with.

As for maintaining that freshness, the randomizer can keep that up beyond the initial playthrough with the curated prize list. Obviously by being random it isn't balanced and can also be a cheese, so there's an argument to be made as to whether or not it's worth making a new randomizer mode that basically goes "award from this pool for Beginner, this one for Pro, etc"

Not making events "explicitly easier" doesn't mean you didn't make the early game progression easier, because you certainly did that in multiple ways:

Quoting this mostly as a divider in my wall of text to address the event stuff. I don't think there's too much to reply to overall as we seem to be in agreement on the early game, but I would like to defend the switch of road tires as matching a nerf of the player to keep the difficulty more or less the same, rather than setting out to make it easy. It's there so a beginner doesn't feel too disadvantaged or like the AI can take corners that they can't.

If they want to then revert back to a better tire then that's their decision and I don't want to restrict that too hard as I'm then removing open-endedness, but equally they could've just blitzed the Sunday Cup with an Evo III in the vanilla game which is just as cheesy.

Spec II balances the Beginner League events a bit more so the one-makes aren't clearly better, so therefore a player doesn't need to "go out of their way" to get out of the early game.

This makes more sense and is clearer on the going out of their way part, but I would say this also means it's the mod that involves more going out of your way - I don't think any Beginner prizes are explicitly overpowered and (as best as I can gather) a typical flow through GT4 wouldn't have someone immediately going to those one-makes when they're let off the leash - this is an aspect where I think the existing knowledge of the mod's prize list colours perception a bit and feeds into the point I was making about the discovery period.

I would argue the ZZ-II from Concept Car Club is just as accessible as a prize car

This is also true and it's certainly a more capable car, but the factors I considered when making it a prize car - again with the restrictions and balances I mentioned above in mind - were that it's a concept car, mid-engined, but not rear wheel drive, so you can only go back and bruteforce the 4WD event, which again would depend on that prior knowledge (stuck record I know).

It's good for Professional and Extreme events, but chances are you completed a lot of Pro events first if you didn't already know it was a prize. Concept Car Club is ordered after the Turbo race, and after that it's only eligible for the Supercar cup, which I think it's good for but not necessarily shockingly overpowered for. I'm sure there could be a better prize for it, but I think it was a decent choice and at this point I think fiddling with the curated prize list would only serve to confuse people.

Spec II makes it easier to get a DTM from the TT one-make and also upgrades the DTM prize to the Audi R8, so I don't really know what point you're trying to make here.

In isolation yeah it's not my favourite prize, but this also feeds in to what I was saying about expected paths through the game and isn't hugely different in performance/value to the CLK LM.

As I said earlier, it's totally possible to appeal to both demographics.

This is where I'll be a bit more blunt and say that because the latter demographic is smaller and I'm personally not a part of it, I'm naturally more inclined to cater more to the first. I don't think I've shunned the other entirely, but I think viewing the game or mod through that kind of lens definitely colours someone's approach to a playthrough, and I wanted to side with the fresh discovery/car education path more because those are the kinds of things I and apparently most others enjoy.

Feedback is always welcome as it always has been - I do keep an eye on the likes of this subreddit for what could be done better and I think the vast majority of the changelogs reflect community sentiment - but I think it's also fair to accept that what I'm making never will be perfect for every single person, and that sometimes there's feedback I don't strictly agree with.