There's still that problem of attrition that I find to be annoying. I don't like that each encounter isn't important. It's those encounters at the end of the "day" that really start to matter. The previous ones... Not so much. But, if I'm running a campaign where there are no "filler" encounters, no "grinding dungeons", etc... Then, the whole thing simply feels unsatisfying.
Of couse there are rising tide and climax fights in a plot-driven adventure.
First you fight henchmen, then the dragon (as in the boss' right hand. may or may not be an actual dragon) and then the big bad.
Plotwise, the PCs start at full power, grind through the henchmen, burn out against the dragon, then gain a "long rest" to get back to full and have an epic fight against the big bad.
Plot-based adventures work perfectly fine in 4th edition. You're welcome at my table if you don't believe it.4E was _designed_ to be a dungeon crawl system. What I'm proposing is turning it into a system that's designed around a story, plot, etc...
Plots and dungeons aren't that different: In a dungeon, you bash a door to get to the next encounter, in a plot, you follow a clue.
In a dungeon, you decide whether to go left or right down the hallway, in a plot, you decide whether to talk to the vizier first or investigate that warehouse in the harbor. In a way, a dungeon is just a very restricted plot that railroads the story with solid stone walls.
Plot-based adventures are a storytelling technique.
The game system you use is just a framework to determine PC success or failure.
D&D has strong support for dungeon-based play as a matter of tradition, but whether you use that or not is your decision as DM.