I completely agree with you, but in actuality it wouldn't work. When it comes to tuning, "Raceboy77" somehow has the market cornered, and seems to get ALL the love. Everyone knows his name, and downloads his tunes, and this just propagates all through FM7. I go out of my way, to avoid his tunes, and buy anothers, (RPM Bibblefish, GTz LIquid, etc) but even I have a dozen or so of his tunes. You would be hard pressed to find an online race that doesn't have 1 of his tunes running in it. Almost all of his tunes have ratings of 5 stars, no one else is even close, although a few others have a decent amount. And you are correct about the tunes for different tracks. It makes a huge difference. Unfortunately, I think what happens MOST, is that a racer posts a great time, scrolls through the leaderboards, sees a top time, wonders how, sees the tune, and downloads it. This way just makes it so lazy to pick and choose, highlight and click, and now it belongs to you. And this is how Raceboy77 has so many highly ranked tunes. (He has made a lot of great tunes for key division cars, and it seems that he started tuning right from the beginning of release, that also helps).
Painting is different I think primarily because it's just the look, and not performance based. And so many people have differing opinions on what "looks" good. Still, go to the auction house and you will see the same painters designs, over and over. Mass produced. I am very picky when it comes to what I download paint wise. Sometimes Racing designs, other times Street designs. I am a lousy painter so my designs are very simple. (except for my GMC Vantura A-Team van, it might be my best work, but still simple by most standards). My favorite painters are LOLO 80, Wombi62, The REAL DRdeluxe and a few friends from this site (
) but mostly I never know until I see it.
Your proposal is inspiring, because I believe you should be compensated for what you take the time to build and create. But I think it will make the rich get richer. Greed seems to always win over.