This has probably been suggested before but forgive me if I won't read through the dozens of posts in this thread (just adding my voice I guess): There could be specific 'time-phases', e.g. morning, afternoon, night, and these only progress to the next phase when a short rest is done.
Let's say you just finished a long rest. Its morning now; you do a short rest, then it's afternoon. You do another short rest, then it's evening/night. At this point, you do a long rest, and the cycle repeats.
It isn't about timing. If they built their engine from the ground up, rather than say starting and customizing Unity or Unreal, if they have no integrated the cycle in the bones of the engine, it is extremely difficult to do later in development. For instance, I am working in Unreal, and it has it already in the Skybox. But my guess is, they have a completely custom engine like CDPR does, and this has just been one of those things that has been a PITA to integrate. That is why I think the will end up simulating it as an instance of BG to give night missions.
The game would need to force you to do both of your short rests before you can do your long rest with this system, but I think that's acceptable.
I am not for ANY mechanic that artificially dictates my play time, or how I play. So I would be completely against forcing someone to complete short rests before long rests.
