I'll make this simple:

Crafting: lots of people botted + bot every day killing prices

Gathering: lots of people botted (like 90% of lvl 50 fishers) + bot every day killing prices

Leveling: powerleveling is essentially an exploit. Even if it isn't why bother even having levels then if SE's idea for the first 30 is to go afk while your friend runs around killing sheep

and then stuff like Garuda: Everyone that did it non stop and essentially exploited it before the fix ends up with 7/7 whereas people who try to do it legit can't get a single win.

And I'm leaving out all the nice little historical tidbits like months of 1-shotting coblyns to get to 50.

I've seen a lot of people claim to report those who are botting, SE justifies powerleveling, and there are never any consequences for exploiting systems before a fix.

I understand a lot of people will say "but if people didn't exploit this game would suck". But consider what will happen when 2.0 comes out. A bunch of people will join a game full of maxed out players who are pimped out in gear, crafting jobs, gathering, etc.

Further, since SE decided to make everything in this game 8-man and essentially require a specific set of jobs (ex. blm blm blm whm whm tank bard blm), new players will be at a massive disadvantage end game. They will be unable to compete gear-wise with ppl who botted for years prior to their arrival and amassed 100,000,000+ in gil. They won't be able to experience the 'hardcore' endgame for a very long time as most ls's seem to want at least 3 jobs to 50. And they will find that gathering + crafting is completely unprofitable, as prices for almost everything under what you can get at rank 50 have been undercut to death (and a bunch of new players only making a few 1000 as opposed to the old 10,000 + per leve, aren't going to buy-out gathering/crafting items in the wards).

SE can fix a lot of these problems, but in doing so they will just create new ones.

For example: Make leveling easier than it is and not require any good gear whatsoever
result: FFXIV becomes WoW and fails (unless you seriously think people want to do the exact same boss fight 20-times a day for 2 weeks in a row to get an item they want, since that is what the game would become)

Increase the amount of gil you get from leves back to launch level to balance economy
result: hyperinflation, due to instability in the markets people hold onto their items not sure about how to price things. People who legitimately crafted for months ragequit because their 100mil is now worthless (this happened in ffxi and resulted in a ton of people leaving).

etc....

So the main question i'm asking (and this is a question, not an argument):
Why does this game still allow the exploits, bots, etc, to continue? If there was an exploit like the blm thing in FFXI they usually fixed it within a few days and often banned people. Here, everyone openly rushes to exploit the game before its fixed. How is that sustainable in a competitive gaming environment when you are trying to attract 1000s of new people? Or is FFXIV supposed to be the new diablo 2 open battle net?