The more I think about it the more pleased I am with the revamp of combat. I think the game could have been okay with the current system if (and only if) they implemented another... say, 2 tiers of armor for every difficulty. If said armor was generic only (semi-forcing you to lose your race-specific bonuses for 2/3 of a tier every tier), that would still be sets at *2 and *8 levels every tier, so another 80 armor sets that you're constantly changing just to keep up. If you wanted to keep the racial bonuses, that's another 560 sets (including novakids) that need to be made, so it's far, FAR more efficient for them just to rework the combat balance as is and keep the release schedule mildly sane. I do hope there's a bit of hidden variance on the easy/normal/hard enemies per each content tier to keep combat fresher.
I also hope (and honestly assume this is the case) that there will be more critter attacks added in later. I'm looking at this stage as exactly what they promised: most of the advanced systems are out and will be added later once the base game is stable on as many platforms as possible. From their descriptions it seems like they'll add in stuff one mechanical system at a time to test each one adequately instead of dumping in the whole mess and having a massive convoluted bug report jumble to sift through before they can even begin fixing issues.
Plus it gives me new stuff to play with every patch for a while, and then on release when the story and questing system goes in I can have something new to look forward to then, as well.