The whole camping system feels like they are trying to re-invent the wheel.
BG1&2 had a simple resting system that works great and is immersive.
- No tedious food management. Seriously, when was this ever fun in an RPG? Most RPG's don't make you collect food and water for a good reason. Larian is all about "what works in a video game" yet they insist on having this tedious mechanic that was never fun in any video game. I am not having fun collecting the myriad food items from endless containers. Abstract and integrate food into long and short rests without having to manage it!
- You rest wherever you are exactly, no unnecessary teleporting to mysterious locations that don't exist on the map. Immersion and meaningful decisions where to rest.
- No resting at all in impossible locations that are too dangerous or hazardous.
- Choose to camp in a hostile location and risk being attacked.
I think BG3 needs at least some form of random encounters in and out of long resting to make the world feel alive and less scripted. That ties in directly with the resting system as you need something that prevents spamming rest in a D&D game that is balanced around resting. Collecting food is just tedious and it doesn't really restrict you from resting as much as you want anyway. A timer would be even worse as it would create downtime in playing. That really only leaves either a gold tax and/or random encounters to encourage you to Long Rest as little as possible. Or scripted events from the passing of time, i.e. fail quests, miss opportunities etc. Not sure how much fun that would be and it sure would be a lot of work for Larian.
So stop reinventing the wheel and do it exactly like BG1&2. Or build on that with actual camp sites (that already seem to exist in BG3 in many places) and a gold cost or something.
