If combat is just a slog vs a bag of hit points, that's a problem. No different than out of combat challenges.
I don't see a difference, and what is enjoyable for one group or individual may not be for another. Die rolls for resolving out of combat challenges is just one tool in the box. I use a variety.
The bold part is absolutely true, and perhaps I should be prefacing a lot of my statements with "in my opinion". But, yes, definitely: when I say something is boring and uninteresting I mean
for me. YMMV.
Anyway, back to the dice rolling...
What I don't like is a situation where there's an obstacle (a trap, a lock, a wall, a ledge) that is clearly meant to be solved one and only one way, and that involves a win or lose dice roll.
I prefer trade-offs. Two different options, each of which may or may not require some kind of roll, with different benefits/risks. An example would be the "pick the lock and take time, or smash the door and alert the ogre" example previously. I like that.
If there's a ledge to be crossed with Acrobatics, I want to know what the other option is. Can I go around the long way and make a Stealth check to avoid waking something up? Or maybe it will cost me time?
What I find uninspired and uninteresting, mostly because it doesn't require me to make any decisions, are pure skill check/resource consumption obstacles. The DM could just save time by saying, "Ok, everybody with less than +5 in Acrobatics, take 7 damage. Everybody else is fine." And it honestly wouldn't be any more or less engaging for me. If rolling the die isn't a
calculated risk, I'm not invested in it.
I played in an adventure last night and we had a choice of two paths. We chose one, and stumbled into a trap (involving some grease, a ramp, a pit, and bad guys, so it wasn't just a single roll). Before we made the choice we looked around, but there were no clues as to which path we should take, or what the trade-off might be in taking them. And I guess we failed passive Perception checks or something, because the trap was just sprung on us and we all had to make Dex saving throws. But it felt like something that was
done to us, rather than something we
got ourselves into to, because we only had one decision to make along the way, and it was made randomly because we had no information. We were just along for the ride.
Once we were actually in the pit (I failed my save) we could start making decisions again, and from there on I was engaged again. It was a fun fight.