it's far from be viable, it's not even decent. it's still a band aid that solve nothing.
you talk of people that want to specialize into this, believe me i had hope for something really big and grand before the patch and since... it's only deception on deception.
i means it's clearly possible to create something really insane with the hunt. but that not them goal, it's only a secondary activity, then instead to work seriouly on it and bring us something that was waited for, we do have get this instant gratification fest.

how make it grand? easy...
First you need to rework all the system for make it more interesting:
exit the dailies/weekly, exit the mark in the open world too. (that a good start since all this junk are barely enough)
instead you bring back the faction leves system, more you hunt for a city, more your earn point for this city, with this point, you get acces to bigger bounty that can be done in group of 4-8. but that not enough, you can even get some bounty for alliance, that give better reward indeed, but are far more dangerous. if you fail, you loose the bounty and the point used for buy it.
this bounty can be classed for people with stuff i70-90-100-110 and offer a challenge for everybody in the community, while still offering the possibility to offer interaction with other. since you will need more people for get the best bounty and some FC out don't have the 24 people for do a full alliance.

that cover the dailies/weekly part, for the open-world part, use the FATE already present for add more deepth. i have said that the FATE systeme need a rework. here the idea, you divide the FATE into 2 type, the helping community with the escort, gather item,.. and the hunt part, with kill a pack of monster and kill boss FATE. the two type can pop in sametime, actually the two must pop at the sametime, when one helping spawn a hunt FATE must spawn for force people to choice, better for make it more interesting, the timer of all FATE must be lowered, 15 minutes is too much for most of the FATE, indeed when nobody is around it's nice and all, but i think 8-9 minutes is more than enough. they need to add pressure to the player about be fast for act.
you can even push more, by making special boss fate only spawn if some recquirement into kill pack of monster fate are meets. like end the FATE in less of 3 minutes and the boss will pop.

anyway, it was even possible to create a content that allows the creation of a ladder and make a meta-game into FF14 with the hunt, but that wasn't the goal and we did get this... farce!