I’m not saying that I know the solution to this, but… Counter-strike.
In that game you play the same scenario hundreds upon hundreds of times, with slight differences and a huge sensitivity to player skill. There’s no “advancement” or “progression”. But it is very, very fun, and very replayable. Not once in counter-strike have I stopped and thought “this grind is boring.”
Perhaps this has more to do with the fact that progression in Counter-strike is more related to the player, and not the character. Same with MOBA style games.
This is that kind of system Gw2 needs, It shows that no-grinding doesn’t mean no repetition.
It means more of ‘No doing repeated things where there is a shallow cap on the effectiveness of the players actions and how they influence the reward’.
For instance levelling up by killing the same mobs over and over again is considered grinding in most games. This is because there is a ‘maximum level’ you can attain, and that once you attain that level the grinding servers no purpose, despite the players skill constantly increasing, he hits a cap. Where his new tactics don’t offer any tangible benefits.
Imagine a game with no level cap. The players are allowed to get as strong as they amount of time they invest. Suddenly I believe it’d feel a lot less grindy, and more ‘competitive’.
If any of you have played WoW in the last few years, you’d realize that the game has turned into AFK in a main city until dungeons pop up, then run the dungeons and repeat for tokens. This felt like a terrible grind. Why did this feel like a grind, when playing game after game of counter-strike, (With less variation in each instance) feel so un-grindy.
Shallow rewards. Situations where the characters power and effectiveness was limited, despite the increasing player skill.
The reward doesn’t even need to be an item or something that ‘improves’ the players ability to perform the activity. It could simply be a Kill-death score, or a Matchmaking rating.
I therefore suggest to AAnet, to use this phiolosophy when they’re designing level 80 content, or future content. Ensure that there is no ‘hard-cap’ in the connection between player skill, and effectiveness.