As someone who dates from the original 1970s era D&D game system and who has played most every decent RPG based around that system, I quite agree that Larian needs to do away with infinite-camping whenever you-want.
It makes the game much too easy. It is nothing like pen and paper D&D in any of it's incarnations, and the original thread poster is of course, completely wrong about other games not having limitations on camping/travel. Most games do, because, the passage of time becomes completely meaningless, and the whole world becomes silly and abstract and distance irrelevant, if you can just instantly zap to camp to totally recharge at will so that you basically fight each big fight at full strength. That's just stupid and counter to what D&D is even about. The rules/spells are designed so that one has to husband one's spells, to use their head, to play wisely and strategically with future fights in mind.
It is the single most immersion crippling artifice in the game currently, and I do imagine it is temporary, since it really wrecks any pretense at calling this a D&D based game, and the game is of course, far from finished.
I actually enjoy the simple "it's day until you decide to camp" practice. After all, we are beings who are active in the day and sleep at night. It's natural, and a clever design idea. If the maps were a lot larger, this would not work. But, seeing as the distances traveled are fairly minimal, the "camping at end of day" idea actually works pretty well, in my opinion.
What needs to change, I think, are the following.
1. Fast travel should be limited some, either to a MUCH longer range away from enemy owned areas, or, (this would be my choice), having to travel on foot back to the nearest teleport gimmick. A forced march hardcore version for purists like me would actually be fine as an option.
2. Overnight camping should have a TIMER, to keep people from recharging after each fight, or, why even pretend it's a D&D based game? Leave the ability to teleport to camp in for crafting chores, but base the actual full rest on when the sleeping bags were last used.
3. For added "realism", add one full-rest on site option using portable sleeping bags and campfires anywhere you want to try it, with variable chances for encounters while asleep. Add the ability to set one character as a "guard" to avoid surprise. THIS will add a huge amount of a feeling of a D&D session, as well as much, much more immersion. If the campers are dumb enough to camp inside the gobbie village, good luck on that.
This would make the idea of keeping slogging along viable, add a lot of realism to the notion of adventuring and terrain actually existing, without running out of spells entirely deep in places like the Underdark.
4. Let the dog come along with his own cute little backpack as an extra bearer of goods. At higher levels, add a tiny cart for him, and perhaps a mate, to pull with more goods. We did this all the time in my pen and paper campaigns. It would allow for longer excursions.
5. The whole growing camp as an organic, natural and expanding place is a wonderful idea. It will be great have "buyable" crafting stations in game, merchants you can host there at the camp, and an influx of visitors- adventurers needing supplies, more party/holiday events, placeable unique trophy items to personalize one's camp. There really needs to be things to spend money on, and expensive crafting stations will help that problem.
My two coppers on this subject.
