IMO the biggest problem is that TW forgot "the carrot on a stick". Many people enjoy ARPG´s despite being mostly grind. BL is the same way but unlike in other ARPG there is no epic item waiting for you at the end. you just grind to grind more. up to a point where it simply becomes tedious and not fun. so people look for a way to avoid it. Make the grind at least slightly enjoyable and less people would cheese on their own. Cheesing is just a symptom of a bigger problem.
hmm maybe sometimes this is the case, but there are people that cheese and cheat no matter the game, and no matter how grindy a game really is. You just can't cater to the requests of such kind of players and always give them the benefit of the doubt and give them easy things that ruin the game experience overall, because generally a game is more fun when there is also a challenge, no matter what the challenge is. Even for cheesers and cheaters it will feel more like an accomplishment if they beat a difficult game than an easy one. Imo cheesing is not always a symptom of a bigger problem, but sometimes can indeed be. Like, just above you you can see someone saying "winning is fun", and not thinking further ahead. Some people will do anything to win, even cheat in video games, even ruin other people's experience by cheating in multiplayer games, and I don't want to hint at what kind of people those are but, it's simply not the people you want to listen when changing things in a game. I personally don't see how winning by cheese or cheating is fun in any way. For me winning is fun when there is also a challenge and I overcome it, and for many people it is the same, because the sense of accomplishment is what is very fun for many people. That is why games like Dark Souls are even popular at all. So in that sense, we do need bigger challenges in the game, and also bigger rewards for those challenges, of course. That would make sense.
But it's easier said than done. This is not an mmorpg or something else (even though there will be mods that definitely make it so). Mount and blade is not a game about epic overpowered loot... there are no weapons that use the strength of the gods and deal lightning damage and what-not, erasing armies. Mods will create that though for sure. But there are still things that can be introduced in the vanilla experience of course. For example, smithing was supposed to introduce an interesting system of "you lose your weapon, and a bandit or lord might have it later or something". But instead the shops just get spammed with the weapons you sold (I would completely remove this as a thing...). If the game had more unique weapons and smiths that you and npcs can pay lots of gold (that is another thing money can be used for), to give lords unique weapons, and also introduce bandit heroes with unique weapons as well, that would at least be a cool little reward system (not op, just interesting, you can keep the weapons you find on lords/heroes as collectibles in a chest somewhere or something, especially if we had a hideout, and it would say the previous owner on the weapon's description written in a goldish/brownish italic writing, very cool). We basically need more things to invest in and more cool little systems like this. There is a lot of money to be gotten in the late-game, but there is nothing to invest that money into, so paying a smith like 100k for a very good weapon could be a really nice idea. If we had a thing like a hideout that we can upgrade for lots of gold then it would be more meaning for the money as well, making the grind and time spent in the game make more sense.
Because I do agree that grinding can feel pointless at one point, since some things are missing from the game. The same problem comes with the leveling system and how it's harder and harder to level skills the more you level, it basically becomes more and more grindy (with artificial exp reduction from level-ups as well), and it's less and less rewarding because you get perks very rarely even after lots of grinding, and many times they aren't good perks either. So this argument about reward system is overall a good point that needs improving on multiple facets.