Adjusting tire pressures isn't really tinkering to get the handling as you want though if it's being adjusted to get the correct spread of temperatures across the tires.
In my experience with other sims you usually get a window of "correct" pressures. Staggering pressures at the high and low ends of the window gives a small amount of control over the handling.
You're right that it's not a major tuning tool, but if you're starting at the low end with road cars it's something that I feel should be emphasised. If you go to a track day the organisers will tell you to check your tyres and check your brakes.
I'm not certain that many people would want to have to possibly run numerous laps before a race experimenting to get the optimum tire pressures/temperatures in order to be competitive.
We do want people doing at least a small amount of practice before each race if safety is to be taken seriously. You can't expect people to simply jump into a random car and track and be both competitive and safe.
But that aside, there's a tough argument that has been going on in sim racing for years and will probably always go on. Fixed or open setups?
You can have fixed setups which means nobody gets an advantage from spending time on setup, but means that some people are potentially disadvantaged because of their driving style. Or they straight up don't like how the car drives, but can't do anything to adjust it so don't drive at all.
The other option is having open setups which means that everyone can drive the car as they want, if they want to put the time into making it suit themselves (or downloading a few tunes off the net and trying them out, which is probably more like it for 90% of the population). People make a fuss about how time consuming it is, and it can be if you want to do it all yourself. But the reality is that if you don't want to spend the time then you'll probably find something between the base tunes and what's available online that is close enough.
I think in a game with a limited car list, you need to have at least some form of open tunes. There's limited ability for a player to change cars to get one they like, so you need to be able to allow them to adjust. People who don't tune may be disadvantaged, but that can be largely mitigated by allowing in-game tune sharing, or simply having websites like GTP that share tunes.
I know in iRacing there's only a couple of cars that I actually tune myself, and the rest I just download tunes from players whose setups I know I can generally get on with. I try them out myself in the dozen or so laps I run before a race to warm up with the car and track combo, and job's done.
For myself, I think that it's OK that if people want to be competitive at the very top that they need to spend time getting the setup just so. That's like real racing. At lower levels, the setup is actually less important. It can help, but unless it's really shocking driving skill is probably still going to be the determining factor.
That's where having quality base tunes comes in. A good base tune is capable of being fast, and the reason for changing it is not that you need to go faster but that you can be more safe or consistent. I find that in a hot lap setting my own tunes are often a little slower, but because they suit my driving style over a race distance I can be faster because I make less mistakes. That's a choice I make, and I think something that everyone should have available to them. Unfortunately, for some things you're just required to put in the time if you want the results, and to a certain extent tuning is one of those.
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