Do we have concrete information on all of the restrictions on long resting yet? It's obvious from the gameplay we've seen that you can only long rest in safe places, but doesn't the implementation of long rest & traditional spell slot uses sort of degrade the balance of the game?
There's nothing to stop a party from backtracking to a safe location after every fight to fully replenish HP & Spell slots that we've seen so far, which completely trivializes the difficulty of subsequent encounters, which is a big part of D&D typically. The pressure from the DM as well as the setting usually prevents players in an actual game from backtracking to long rest all the time; time passes, situations in the game change, certain factors can prevent backtracking; it's very inconvenient to do so, and since the game is flexible thanks to having a DM, players can be prevented from taking such advantage of the system. Such a thing couldn't be put into place for Baldur's Gate 3, though, because it could result in situations where the game is purely "unwinnable", i.e. you are not allowed to long rest or backtrack, you're out of spell slots, and can't possibly win the next encounter.
This means that if combats are balanced around having a full kit available to take on enemies, those who don't spend the time to backtrack and long rest after every fight will be at a significant disadvantage in fights. If it's balanced around the idea that people will take on fights consecutively, then those who backtrack and long rest will experience trivial difficulty.
The way it's implemented almost makes it seem like spell slots should just recover after combat, though that wouldn't be true to the D&D ruleset. In a video game setting, though, that's essentially what we're getting with no restrictions on how often you can long rest.
The only way I see around the issue is if enemies respawned after long rests, which of course is an odd idea for a multitude of reasons and wouldn't work well within the universe, not to mention XP implications.
What does everyone else think about this? I've not played the previous Baldur's Gate games, but from what little I've researched, it seems like resting after every available encounter is pretty normal. Seems kind of contrived to me. Wouldn't it be easier just to let characters replenish resources outside of battle instantly,. even against the ruleset of 5e?
