There are a lot of people who have made the point that if people don't like the unlimited long rests, then they should just self-police rather than complain to Larian and thus ruin a feature that other people enjoy for the way it makes things easier. Normally I agree that people shouldn't ask a game to punish or prohibit a behaviour they feel makes it too easy simply because they can't stop themselves from taking advantage of it, but I do feel it's different in this instance, because unlike something like save-scumming, the rest mechanic is integrated into the game in such a way that, if you don't know D&D then it makes the difficulty wildly variable and it messes with how a player thinks of the various classes. Plus, the game actively incentivizes long resting often enough to reduce the game's difficulty.
Many people have pointed out that classes and class resources are built around the rest mechanic. It's why wizards have powerful spells they can only use a limited number of times but warlocks have spells that are effectively unlimited and stronger abilities that replenish on short rests. If you're not familiar with D&D then you look at the classes and see that some classes have powerful abilities that can be used after a long rest, which is unlimited and gives you the chance to interact with your party and have cool story stuff potentially happen, after which you're fully healed. Meanwhile other classes have less impressive abilities that you can only replenish twice before you need to long rest again anyway. BG3 outright inverts the resting economy of the tabletop game without altering anything about the classes to match, and that seriously messes with class balance in a way that someone unfamiliar with D&D wouldn't realize. And I'm one of those people. I've played a handful of sessions of D&D and have never really dug into it very much. The mechanical stuff behind it is still largely a mystery to me. I only know as much as I do from these forums, so it's perfectly reasonable that a casual D&D fan will play this game and not know that there's anything substantially "wrong" with Larian's approach and won't know that the more balanced way to play involves holding off on resting.
And I want to touch on another matter. Save-scumming and other "cheese" tactics like that are fine in my book because while they're easier, the game doesn't incentivize it. They're a kind of way to brute force the game if you can't figure out any other way, and I think it's actually a good thing when games have that kind of valve for when trying stops becoming fun and just becomes an obligation. But in this case, long rests are just better and more fun in several ways than short rests, so players are encouraged to take long rests and engage with the story and companions more.
