Gotta be an encore. It's unfortunately become a given at this point, so it no longer feels spontaneous or special. But you still have to do it. I'm someone with an uncommon interest in the actual craft of setlist construction and I think the encore is an essential piece of the setlist, if you leave on the set closer then it's anticlimactic.
Plus even though encores are pretty set in stone these days, you still have those special times when a genuinely spontaneous encore emerges. Ten or so years ago we saw the then-current version of Ten Years After playing in a tiny pub and when they were done we were going so crazy they had to come out and do 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain. Didn't play that track on any other gig that tour! 'Course the flipside is our local Pavillion theater has strict noise ordinances that cut a lot of shows short. When The Doors of the 21c came through they had to cut Riders on the Storm and the new original track off the set, that was a drag. When Neil Young & Crazy Horse came through on the Greendale tour we only get about 10 minutes of non-Greendale stuff because of the noise curfew. Hey, you win some, you lose some, I guess.
Funnily enough, huge huge Roger Waters fan but the fact that he doesn't do an encore for The Wall gigs is one of the reasons I haven't gone to any of the several tours he's done recently. Saw him in the mid-00s touring Darkside and of course we got a whole other set full of amazing stuff like Pigs, Set the Controls, and then of course an encore with Comfortably Numb. One of my favorite concerts I've been to. Gotta have that encore. Can't believe some people run out before the encore to get a jump on traffic -- what a waste!
