On a different note, long resting requiring resources now opens up the possibility of having narrative decisions based around this in the future, that wouldn't have had anywhere near as much of an impact under the old system.
Find a beggar asking for food on the road? You could give it to them, but you might need it for a long rest later too. Or one of your party members may know a spell that provides that food for them. Or there could be a situation later on where your whole inventory gets temporarily taken, and you'll have to go through a gauntlet of fights while scrounging only enough resources to long rest once or twice before you get everything back. The latter scenario would not be possible at all under the old system, outside of disabling the ability to long rest entirely.
One has always gotta think about how the mechanics interact with each other, instead of examining them in a vacuum.
In actual practicality, I don't think this long rest resource thing will really change things all that much. You can probably still just steal everything you need from merchants. Some people who are really bothered by it should be thankful that they didn't go for the Pathfinder WotR solution, which was to take out rations entirely and replace it with a 'corruption' mechanic that results in stat penalties and an assumed immediate game over for resting too much in non-safe zones (and in actual practice, you'd hit the first stat penalty point for resting 3+ times in a single dungeon, which is pretty lenient).
+1 to this.
It also allows them to revise loot values as need be. Silvers and Coppers can be added, merchant prices/values of food can be reduced from golds, all those loot items named "remarkable, magnificent, dazzling, rare, unique" and so on can actually get values greater than a single gold. The addition of creation systems means several smaller food items can be combined to have greater impact when resting. Combining the new die roll system for spell checks with merchants could mean their wares are locked in cabinets and you need to pass high hide/lockpick/disarm/pickpocket checks to actually steal loot - with skill/spell/gear optionally impacting those rolls.
On the rare occasions I tested out stealing from merchants, I found the need to cast a cantrip on rogue, then hide, then move into position, then attempt the pickpocket, then attempt to escape to be unwieldy - now some of those operations can be handled simultaneously with the die system. Honestly, I prefer a game that works of my CHARACTERS skills and abilities - not mine, unlike my character my age and health are NOT that of my chosen character. I have arthritis - my character doesn't.
We already obtain certain "merchant" types at our camp, such as Volo and Skeletor. Why can't our owlbear and pupster handle some hunting chores while we are off adventuring? Maybe one of those thiefling tag-alongs will play hunter-gatherer with the wee beasties as the price for some quest?
Things like improved character stat creation, more body and voice types, additional races - those are things that get added in toward the end of development, as they are far easier to complete when all the back room mechanics are in place. These changes, while not all necessarily ones I would desire, are all on the engine and transmission of the game. The high end stereo, a/c, power windows/doors, blue tooth connections and other flashy extras come later.
