I agree that the apparent teleportation is weird and while I personally don't entirely mind suspending my disbelief somewhat around camp and letting it slide as by saying what we're seeing is just an abstraction, I at least would like them to input differing camp aesthetics depending on where you are. As for camp being safe and there being random encounters, that can be cool, but it depends on how difficulty ultimately gets balanced in the game. If the game makes it so by the time you need to rest your party is at the end of its rope then a random encounter could potentially be punishing. Pathfinder Kingmaker managed to pull that off by both having mechanics that let you avoid random encounters based on dice rolls and by making it so that if you're resting it's less likely to be because your party is almost completely beaten down and more because of status effects that lower their combat effectiveness. So while you're handicapped in combat you have a fair shot of winning.
As for xp, I think it's better if all companions level up with you because it's just easier to manage, otherwise you have to be constantly swapping around party members if you want them to keep pace with each other, and given the limitations of the already small party that's going to be an annoying. Especially for people who want to experience every party member's story. Using the current party members as a barometer I think (and honestly hope) that all party members will bee quite in depth in terms of their storylines and backstory (though I agree it would be nice if they weren't all tadpole infested) so having a lot of party members would be unlikely, especially since they're all going to be voiced and that represents automatically a large investment of time and money.
