Which effectively means for the most part that everyone ends up
a) running with people who are much higher level to kill bounties that they could not possibly scratch otherwise
b) standing at the gate and waiting while the high levels in team kill the bounties alone

And ironically, about 6 hours after I posted this, a server patch was made so everybody gets 10% less xp per level below the highest player in team for kills, and players who are 6 levels lower than the highest level player in the party get no bounty experience at all. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

What a brilliant business decision for an online multiplayer game, preventing one half of the community from playing with the other half, and making it practically impossible for anyone new to game to advance in any significant manner
This is almost as good of an idea as the doubled aggro radius of zone bosses (done with the same update). Newcomers will be thrilled with joy being jumped on by a 5 meter tall level 20 spider boss that instantly kills them when they go on a "level 3: get me some item, blah blah" quest.

Of course, fixing the actual problem (that is, providing a realistic no-cheat way to players to gain experience by awarding xp for fighting normal monsters that won't kill them) is entirely out of the question.

(still trying hard not to fall off my chair laughing)

In the original tony hawk pro skater you could glitch the game into thinking you hadn't landed a trick by jumping right as you landed from a previous jump. You would float around the level able to do spins and grabs until you ran into a wall or something you could grind on.

After this every level turned into me trying to beat it without cheating and if I wasn't able just smoking it with a single trick with the above glitch.

In SSX tricky, if you filled your tricky meter you got unlimited boost. In any race of decent length I would just do tricks till my tricky meter was full then boost down the entire track. If the track was any signficant length it was pretty much impossible to lose.

In HL1 and most HL1 mods, the sky/edge-of-the-world was treated as 'water' by the game's physics for some strange reason -- some levels had exploits where multiple players could form a human ladder, allowing people to get out of the level and 'swim' up into the sky, where they could easily snipe everyone.

I'm sure lots of other FPS games have had "out of the world" or "inside a wall" type exploits as well.

There's bunch that I know from the Sonic series, but one of the most interesting ones comes from the original Sonic that grants the player (practically*) infinite lives. Here's how:

1. Go to Marble Zone Act 1
2. Get down to 1 life.
3. At the end of the level, hit the very last enemy, without catching any rings. Be sure that the enemy's fragment bounces to the right. (You'll have to hit it on its spikes)
4. Proceed to the right, but keep the bouncing enemy fragment in the screen.
5. Go past the sign like normal and go past the right edge of the screen. Just before the sign stops spinning, jump.
6. After the sign stops, get killed by the bouncing fragment.

If the "Game Over" music plays over the "Act Clear" music, you've done it right, but I believe the latter has to finish playing first, so DON'T press anything. Once Act 2 starts, you're immortal. Once you get a 1UP, though, you're back to normal.

*They'll probably wrap around to 1 if you die enough times.

EDIT: Added note about the music.