Quote Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur View Post
The game had a fair number of uniquely shaped boss arenas with varied terrain. In fact the game's most difficult fight on release was set on the palm of a gigantic dragon's hand. These irregular arenas while cool had their fair share of problems; things like ranged classes being able to avoid a mechanic because they could stand on top of a pile of sand and players failing to dodge a fight's mechanics because the irregular terrain prevented them from moving away fast enough. From the second update cycle and on the designers ended up changing to flat arenas to prevent these problems.
As someone else pointed out the problem here isn't really one of arena design but more down to the lack of a proper Z-Axis tied to mechanics. It's a problem visible in pretty much every area of the game. Even in places like aurum vale where you can jump over poison puddles and still get the debuff. or you can be 30-40ft in the air and still get hit by a wolfs bites.

a proper working Z axis would make for very interesting possibilities within encounter designs arenas where you could stand on rocks to avoid floods or hide behind them to avoid gusts or fireballs. or even just have varying ledges that allow for different approaches. down low to smasha bosses legs. up higher to crack his skull.... a decent Z-Axis would open up many options