So balance is needed.
Too easy to find food or too cheap to buy supplies and it’s a meaningless mechanic which means people will still long rest adnauseum. Too strict and yeah, watch everyone take elves and classes in order not to be impacted by it.
It anyway, let’s see how it feels after the patch drops.
Yop. The thing is...balance is really not that required in PVE. Not trolling here but neither BG2 or DOS2 were " balanced" in terms of late game mechanics or certain spells /technics you could use early ( not talking about obvious exploits etc ).
Personally I like my PVE games to at least pretend they are balancing anything so I can feel so smart by outplaying their " balancing" attempts. So this resting system thing they add here is a really nice touch
Ultimately if the game was 100% balanced in terms of AI and player possibility the player would loose each time he makes a mistake / take a lot of damage/ loose a character.
If that happens then the only possible meta is to avoid taking damage. By nuking each encounter to preserve those precious resting ressources.
It kinda creates a vicious circle.
We can go in the details once the new patch is actually out but for now I just want to highlight in terms of PVE you balance things out to diminish the power gap between classes/skills so using different combos /spells actually makes sense. Poor wyll is a good example here

@Aazo dSaying resting will delete the mage meta in D&D is an abomination please do not say that out loud ever again.