The way loot works currently is just completely f... up. There is no way to effectively farm for upgrades. You can drop the accessories from normal mode, but what real upgrade would it be if you cannot get the scales to upgrade them to a usable level? While yes, its needed for new players, but at the same time they are essentially more or less "useless"untill they get scales to upgrade, which is nearly impossible.
Just like the answer above. The only way to get onyx scales right now seems to just be the chest from kagcha, and farming mushin tower. All scales after that are horrible to farm and get from normal / easy modes. And you cant do hard modes if you dont get the scales to upgrade the gear.
It kinda depends. If its a anticheat with a heartbeat, simply deleting files will not do anything as the game will not even let you in.
I think it will take 2 things:
1. A decent anti cheat
2. Development work to fix / block the parts players are editing. they had a chance to do it directly with ue4, but they didnt take it.