I agree with a lot of points you make but I refuse to see PL'ing as an exploit. I mean, I haven't found a way to have someone PL me while I am afk, I still have to run around and aggro mobs and then have my PL kill them. Honestly speaking, if you want to discourage PL'ing, make being the other levels that aren't 49 and 50 entertaining and fun. Instead, even on your own solo, you can level through the first 30 levels so fast there is literally no point in buying gear or doing anything to customize your character because your not going to be low level long enough to need it.

The rate of leveling in this game is a broken joke right now and has been since launch. I don't think grinding is the answer necessarly, or that time ='s toughness, but as it stands now, levels 1-3 materia are a pointless joke, and anyone that wants to get a PL to skip through the redundancy of being low level in 5 mins instead of 10 makes total sense to me. Maybe reduce the xp you get for killing mobs at low levels and increase the number of quests that require 2-6 people to do and then increase how much xp you get for doing them. Gives us things that make being level 25 interesting beside Toto-Rak, which in of itself is pretty bland.