I would personally love a day/night cycle, it is just more immersive to me.
Anywho.
I believe these are consequences of a poorly thought out story that was quickly made up in order to give us players an excuse to cooperate with NPCs that would oppose our own moral clock, and an somewhat immersive explanation as to why morally deviant characters would possibly work with us.
It is a conequence of poor storytelling; which I believe could be salvaged but this requires a lot more work on Larian's hands, as it requires some deeper coding changes, and possibly dialogue changes, neither of which we will get by now, but explaining what I have thought up throughout the day, may give Larian an idea.
I still think there should be a price for not resting enough, and a price for resting. I have suggested before that we get an exhaustion debuff if we do not rest enough, this exhaustion debuff will only worsen the more we do not rest. Long rests themselves will cost supplies, that we will somehow have to pay for, or gather enough ingredients (buy ingredients for cheaper) to craft. This will work itself into the economy of the game, and it will give us players an incentive to loot other things, and not just barrels. Cooking could be worked into the long-rest system, add it to one of the already existing skillchecks, much like in pathfinder, you can get some extra buffs for cooking certain foods (In pathfinder kingmaker every character has a favourite dish, and preparing that dish during camping will give that character a buff.)
That would be the simpler part of my overall idea.
In terms of the stories related to long-resting, it needs an overhaul. We need to be able to get more of these stories outside of long-resting. In regards to the tadpole, I think we should see some effects of it's use outside of our dreams. The first two or three times may be related to our characters sleeping, I would suggest only the first two times. After that the tadpole would have gotten enough strength to affect our characters more so while still awake and alert, we can still have the visions but we will get them shortly after having used the tadpole again, in the world and not just camping area, following the second dream scenario. It adds a sense of urgency to the story, without adding a timer. I would also suggest to add a debuff and a second buff to more usage of the tadpole, overall I think it should start affecting us regardless of use, but if you do not use the tadpole it would come later on, up until then we should have dialogue related to having not used it, a second story path throughout the game rather than just at the end (Which is probably the only place we'll see a difference in that regard right now, would not surprise me... I know this kind of story-design by now.) Anyway back to the buff, debuff, currently we only get a debateable powerful ability when using the tadpole. I would add to that, a passive buff such as an addition to some of our skillchecks that is decide based on our dialogue choice when "conversing" with the tadpole, and a debuff to the reverse. So if you get a mental buff you get a physical debuff (Nothing so specific, but just an idea that can be built on.)
We need to be able to further companion stories out in the world and not just in camps, to remove the feeling of force to rest because one wants to experience the story. It is not that big of a problem in this regard in terms of story if we add a mechanic that would force us to rest occasionally, but moving some of the camp scenes into the actual world instead, would add to a better flow both in terms of gameplay and story.
