Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Krr]

in fact i'm going to pose that question to everyone reading. What makes an interesting encounter to you?

Just within what can be done in the game engine, let's see~

I'm going to assume these fights were being done when they were relevant and nontrivial. None of this 'echo' or 'doing first coil for fun at item level 90' or 'strats that were reliant on being overgeared' crap. Mind you, I don't conceptualize any of these fights as the peak of the game's design potential, but they clearly shine above the other recent releases.

Caduceus: Actually very little dodging. Judgement calls need to be made by the party on the spawning of adds, though usually with a designated spawner, occasional tail swipe baiting might constitute 'dodging'. Main 'mechanic' of the encounter is the method by which the boss's damage excaberates over time until eventually becoming lethal (soft enrage, essentially,) and manipulating it through the feeding mechanic. Boss split gives both tanks something to do other than 'swap every x seconds'. Players essentially need to coordinate separating and killing both snakes roughly close to each other to avoid essentially resetting or unnecessarily lengthening the encounter.

ADS (pre-enrage): Multiple routes of what are essentially trash throughout the lair that actually determine what mechanics are used and give benefits or disadvantages based on party compositions. Two classes (brd, pld,) have a special role that involves using Silence (should've been more viable for monks and scholars to use too, tbh, but class design issues.) Tanks tank swap, mixing up the usual reliance on adds the game had for offtank duties at the time. Main mechanics to watch out for were a plague pass, and visible encounter-long enrage timer, with some (admittedly quite a bit of) aoe peppered throughout. But a lot of longer-term coordination and team decision making was the name of the game here.

T4: Literally an elevator fight from an action game. Almost no dodging but constant, frequent movement as two tanks have to coordinate a large number of smaller enemies. DPS have to be both meeting a minimum check to pass each phase while still metering out high burn for two heavy DPS check phases. Casters are special in that they deal high AOE damage, melee are special in that they can do heavy burn on dreads or other meaty targets that arrive. Tanks have to manage cooldown timing and healers have to be ready for lethal pressure damage during given phases.

Thornmarch ex -very little dodging at its core. DPS have to coordinate and actually throttle themselves a bit while still meeting minimum requirements, and use an actual combat mechanic that most casters have been taught through experience (interrupting casts with damage). Healers are primarily concerned with staying outta trouble and keeping certain debuffs purged. Judgements have to be made on when it is safe to push the fight while still keeping it moving. DPS have to watch their combat resources in the form of cooldowns, and make sure they have them available for the end of the fight while still doing their jobs decently.

Ramuh EX: Recent, but actually pretty well-thought from what I've played of it. Avoidable damage is present to keep players (especially melee,) aware and moving once in a while, but the main core of the fight revolves around managing a global resource (lightning orbs) and enforcing certain static (HEH) positioning requirements (thunderstorm). The obligatory thematic primal enrage check with a twist- melee need extra awareness for this one due to pressure damage from thunderstorms, and everyone needs to be focus firing (not that they shouldn't be at this point.) Chaotic Strike could be something you need to 'avoid' but it's by and large a party coordination check to make sure players get cleaned without being blown up by their lovely volunteers.

Players will always have established methods for strategizing out encounters. Hell, T4 charts practically looked like a series of football plays. But it's very possible to design encounters where classes actually feel out their uniqueness beyond just 'DPS number' or 'HP Bar' or 'HP Bar Manager' (AOE vs. ST? Burn vs. Sustain? Damage prevention or damage recovery?) and even perform utilities that aren't directly related to their role (Silences and stuns, anyone? Kiting? What about all those other debuffs on our bar we never get to use?,) or have to push their class mechanics to their limits, and individual players have to make real-time decisions. Fights with set patterns of AOE to memorize or mechanics that have predetermined, static solutions don't do this.

Good fights use AOE to create pressure. Bad fights use AOE to create dance dance revolution patterns.