Hey Dookie
In my opinion, having no levels, is too competive minded. I love those little "yeahs" when you get a new level. It's gives you some kind of accomplishement. Also I like it as vanilla as it is. If we change too much, you lose the vanilla side that people love and search for in ET games. I personally love a server with no much changes to the game, to keep it as simple as possible.
But maybe we can set a limit on those levels, like a maximum of level two in light weapons and so on... So we don't have those people who spam a panzerfaust all the time. But that is part of the game. If you can use a panzerfaust to kill 3/4 people, you're a god in my eyes :D.
Or make it more difficult to gain the last thirth and fourth, because these are the most OP ones. That could also be a solution.
And indeed in the competitive scene, stopwatch is the way it should be played. But like @Dmxj said you'll kill the public server that way.
If you like to play stopwatch there is allot of scrims going on right now where you could play. That also means losing quite allot when playing Axis. But on the server I think we are all quite fair, when we need a shuffle or not. So it doesn't become a burden to play. And who cares about SR right, like @TRan$i said it's for noobies :DD.
eMMiel