You have raised pertinent points. I have been around longer here and have seen the devs try to improve the platform continuously. Between the attempts at gaming and the chorus of feature requests, they have been coping up very well and have been tweaking the system. But payout distribution still has a lot to improve.
Of the 50+ members I have got onto steemit, a few are doing well but a majority have become in-active and this concerns me! I do not claim to be a writer and am happy with what I make, or have made, so far. But a friend, and a professional writer at that, whom I had introduced here has been inactive in the last 2 weeks.
Maybe we raise expectations about steemit too much, or maybe the system of payouts is to be tweaked further, but whatever it is it will have to be solved if we are concerned about retention of users.
Also, I agree that the diversity in topics is not what I would like to see. Right from the beginning everybody has been talking of the quality of content and the diversity, but we seem to be stuck as the circlejerks are still around! Some radical ideas are needed if we are to improve on this and hold onto real users, unlike the profusion of bots we seem to have.