You are making assumptions about development time and the amount of options available at your disposal for graphic settings.
Read this forum and read the response posts I made. https://forum.teksyndicate.com/t/gta-5-was-released-on-the-17th-of-september-2013/78119/30
@majormajormajor made this post last month. Which I felt was hugely inflammatory.
Read my responses when it comes to his posts and pirating in general. I got super pissed and pulled a crap ton of sources. No one responded sad face.
About the mods, relax people will get banned and unbanned as they come. Rockstar is actively trying to address the unreasonable bans. Field of view mod being the one that seems to not be turned off from the scripting view while online. Even if you yourself have turned it off. The way the game is designed has an unintended consequence of not being able to check while someone is in single player if they are some how online.
A lot of stuff is always online these days. Just look at steam in general. You don't notice it, because of how well it is maintained. Hardly any one objects to their DRM.