FREAKYTAPIR'S PROFILE

The obvious solutions for balancing a variable number of encounters that a player might have is to indeed give most XP from quests and bosses.
But now players have an even greater incentive to dodge all on-map encounters. The time-reward balance has shifted even more away from reward. Now I feel frustrated every time I do get a random encounter.
Ways I would make sure players are at the right level for a boss:
1. Dynamically raising the max lvl as they defeat bosses.
2. Just have the boss scale to player lvl(within bounds)
3. Big Jumps in XP scale (a soft version of #1)
4. Have the stat gains from levels be minimal.
5. One of the enemies has the key to the boss room, and it just happens to be the 20th encounter. Gives a big signal to players: All right, now you should go fight the boss.
6. Abolish Levels. (But why would you. Lvl'ing is so fun).
7. Want player to fight more random enemies? Introduce crafting. Nothing will have a player grind like crafting.
8. Want them to fight less random enemies? Limit healing, or put the dungeon on a timer.