I can understand that during the period they change to individual components it's a bit tricky for a lot who don't read their forums, and they could improve on it with the idea that Marco made and communicate a bit more how to install things. But when they are all individual components, I can only see benefits from it. (can't find your post mr. Conti, so not aware of the problems you expect from this system)
You could not find my post because it's not here on RD. ZIt's either on the rFactor Foruym or on NoGrip. Might even be on the iRacing forum, it has been a long time.
Back then the issue I saw had to do primarily with Single Player play, not with online. In fact, I recall praising the attempt to make online synchronization more efficient, but my argument was that in SP mode it was a nightmare that either prevented users from running a given car on a given track or variation thereof, or forced the single player to play in "All cars and tracks" mode.
I would have been OK having to do the "all cars and tracks" except for the fact that back then in the ISI mods played in "all cars and tracks" the windscreen was so opaque that it was very hard to see through it, while using the same car in a pre-packaged mod had no such issue.
I think they fixed that particular problem, but it's clear that playing in "All cars and tracks" can introduce changes in the way the game works.
in fact, just yesterday I noticed that my rFactor in "ACAT" mode displayed very washed out colors, with grey wheels and generally very poor graphics, while in Online mode that issue is not present.
At the time I also made another observation that I continue to repeat now and then, which is that the online mod system is a nice start, but why not add a simple text (or better, HTML or Json, etc.) area in the online server to introduce the server to the community, give links to the eventiual missing mods and tracks, maybe put a link to their Forum and a short explanation of the ground rules in game.
I find that even more useful than the current modding system, meaning that if I had a choice between what we have now in Multiplayer and the ability to even just follow a link to a download page, I'll take the latter. Both would be good too.