I hope that wasn't directed at me, because that would be pretty innappropriate for suggesting something innocently as "just a thought"... that is usually followed up by "not trying to tell you how to run your event' but I didn't think anyone here would be that sensitive...
I think all you needed to say was "guys, I really want to make a challenging event so this may not be for some of you" and I don't think anyone would hate you for that.
To the others, I think they could have not criticized so much either. If you like the format, fine. If not, then that's fine too.
I wholeheartedly agree with you by the way. I typically run in very difficult situations as much as possible in order to get that seat time. And when you have some crazy fast guys to learn from, you take that knowledge to every track, every car you drive in the rest of your gaming days...
Pretty sure it was directed at me, Xbox, you were just collateral damage. Let me give a little history to explain my comment.
Back in the day, I used to run the time trials here. As we approached the release of GT5, we ran 6 or 8 time trials in Prologue. The intent was for the guys to have some friendly competition, and also to improve their game, as we always had guest commentary from the fast guys.
What I found was that most of the guys here like the easy cars and shied away from and even bitched about the harder cars to drive (the 599 on S2 tires didn't go over too well, though it was a helluva lot of fun to smoke the tires with even the slightest input of throttle). I have thick skin so the complaining never bothered me, hell, I even bitched about a couple of the cars and I chose the damned things.
So, I made a mental note...the philosophy here is to have fun and if improvement is a byproduct, that's great. The philosophy isn't to improve with having fun as a byproduct.
Guys have come and gone and done their own events. Any time I see or hear chatter about the difficulty of the track or car, I usually relay what I learned. Could I have said things in a different way--probably. If I had known it was going to cause ruffle feathers, would I have changed the way I said it--probably not.
I hope the event is a success. My only point was to bring up what I've found out over the years.