Absolutely. That is exactly the strength of the Delve format. (It's also why I don't think it's wise to abandon it totally. I mentioned the possibility of the "emergency adventure" in a previous post - a short zero-prep Delve to be run in a single session. I feel this format is ideal for that.)
I don't think they are actually proposing to abandon the format entirely. At least they haven't stated they're intending to stop using 2 page spreads as an option. Who knows, but I'd expect it would be quite possible to present things like boss encounters this way.
Here's a thought: did every encounter need to be a 1-page spread? Would it have been possible to encapsulate a simple encounter in half a page? Alternately, if you have four encounters that all share the same environmental conditions and most of the same monsters, could those be combined into a single 2-page spread?
(I would have thought that something like "Sons of Grummsh" could be done in this way.)
That way, you get the tactical spreads without eating up so much space.
Sure, obviously though the first thing that has to happen is they have to invent these other formats and stop requiring that all encounters be formatted with the 2 page spread. This explains my interest in the new format.
(Also, electronic publishing should mean that this isn't the same issue as in print. It should be possible to drag-and-drop large parts of the 2-page spreads into place, after having written the "story" part of the adventure. After all, they're going to be reusing a lot of stat blocks, environmental conditions, and so on. And who really cares if a PDF runs to 41 pages instead of 40?)
I think there's another thing at work here though. The way the 2 page spread works several things happen. First of all the encounter is not only textually isolated from the rest of the adventure, it is shuffled off to a whole other section of the adventure. Secondly it is mandatory to present it in a fixed format. Anything that fits awkwardly within that format is likely to be simply left out or altered. Authors also construct these things by example. When all examples are very similar then encounters tend to come out cookie cutter. Also the separation of combat encounter information from any other information about that part of the encounter simply tends to discourage things like detailing some RP aspect of the encounter that may come up after initiative is rolled.
Beyond that, what if I have a really rocking encounter concept that won't fit in 2 pages, or which the standard layout doesn't work well for. Obviously the fact that it may be a PDF is unrelated to these considerations.
Mostly I just hate the way that a lot of the information is broken out of the flow of the adventure itself. I think there's little justification for that and it just fragments the adventure up in a way that IMHO leads to 'delve-like' adventures.
I can see possible conclusions from this:
1) They're putting the cart before the horse. The format should not dictate the structure of the adventure, and groups missing 20% of the content shouldn't be an issue. Better to use 80% of a good adventure than 100% of a poor one - especially since it's more likely that groups will instead use 0% of the poor one.
Alternately:
2) If it's really not acceptable to skip the encounter and miss the content, then the Delve format is unusable, except for the "emergency adventure"/Dungeon Delve style game.
I'd also postulate something else, which is that adventures containing a lot more RP potential are more highly useful and less information will be irrelevant. If you miss an encounter then that content is simply left unused. If OTOH you provide a couple pages of background, motivations, plot development, etc for the antagonists you are virtually 100% insured that information will be relevant. If encounters are designed in a flexible enough way then sometimes they can also be used even if they're skipped. That is if the opponents in them are interesting you can always at least use them elsewhere. If the other encounter the party doesn't skip is flexibly written you could merge them, especially if there's some degree of notes on how all the parts relate.
Note: I don't think we're disagreeing. Maybe Delve Format is good for a quick filler delve. Maybe not.
