The problem about resting is that we have to rest after every 1 or 2 combats... I don't have enough HP, not enough spell slots, not enough features... To deal with more.
I have a Ranger/Wiz/Warlock/Fighter in my party and I think I've long rested only 2 times and I've hit level 4, so I don't think it's needed all that much. There is a LOT of food around that you can use for healing.
As someone who is playing this like D&D and not resting every fight, I DO wish there was a 2nd short rest per long rest purely for the Warlock class (I would also be fine if food was 1/2 as scarce too).
World / quest / story count downs are a pretty big turn off, so coming up with something else would be nice.
Some ideas:
1. 1 free long rest every X time, doing more costs money, # of completed quests, something. Problem is some people will just afk to run the time out, which doesn't feel like a good design.
2. You can't travel to camp to long rest from a LOT more areas. Feels more like D&D, but in a good campaign there are consequences to you just leaving an area (bad guys reinforce it, etc) and that would obviously be difficult to implement in a video game.
3. Chance at random encounters: At first I liked this idea, but then you have to give them no rewards (xp/items) or they become a farm point. Then if you are having a rough time handling the game, a long rest might spawn an encounter which now needs another long rest. Even if the chance for back to back encounters is very low, or not possible, it seems like this has just become a "you must wait X time to long rest" kind of time sink.
4. Incremental difficulty: What if they choose specific encounters around the world, and every time you took a long rest, (some?) of those encounters got a tiny bit harder. Imagine adding one more minor goblin (that doesn't give loot/xp), etc. This acts as a very very soft clock, where it would take dozens of long rests before hitting the encounter to actually become significantly more challenging (shrug). This would also be broken up by act or level, so there's no way you're punished in Act 2 for resting to much in Act 1.
Open to other ideas, this is a tough one to solve.
