3) Replace need for Long Rest\Short Rest with need for sleep: I don't expect Larian to do this one because it would be drastic (Doubt Wizards would approve), but I will mention it anyway because it is what I REALLY want...
When I read the section on long rests here:
https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Resting#contenthttps://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Resting#content
What grabs my eye is that rest in general, doesn't necessarily require sleep. It just requires not fighting or casting spells for an extended period of time. That happens to me a lot when I am walking around, talking to people, looking at wares (picking merchant pockets).
I read this and I say to myself...why can't HP gain and Spell point gain simply be a gradual climb that always happens without the need to hit special buttons to replenish the values. People would still enjoy a home base to store all that stuff they hoard, craft items, make spells/potions and a place to change out companions.
I think the reason is that Larian needed an area to stage all the cut-scenes. Knowing where the cut scene will happen and what type of ennvironment/furinture is around is vital to some of the scenes. You can't just fire them anywhere. So Larian needs an excuse to get players to go back to this one map where they can fire off the various story progression scenes. But that is the root of the whole problem, right? Larian has built the game around this "camp tv" mechanic but then implies that going to camp for long rests is bad which leads to missed content and frustrated players.
Well, people can still be tired even when they have full HP and Spells If you introduce the idea of weariness and the mentality that "Sleep is necessary to ward off the parasite", you could actually have all three of these suggestions. Camp would be "needed" for sleep, and companions would eventually insist if they had a player who went too long without. But going to camp wouldn't be about SHORT/LONG rests or recovering HP/Spells (just a nice side-effect).
And if resting isn't directly about HP/SP gains, then there is no reason food couldn't simply replenish both HP and spell points as well. Albeit... very small increases. I don't know if I would allow eating the equivalent of 40 camp resources worth of food be enough to restore all HP and SP across all characters.
Finally... this helps to separate the Sleep/Cutscene mechanic from the games difficulty level. If HP/SP gain are gradual, an easy way to increase/decrease game difficulty is to increase/decrease the recharge rate. At easy level, HP/SP might fully recharge in a few minutes. At Normal, it might take 20 to 30 min. At hardcore it could take an actual 8 hours of real-time. Though in all cases, going to camp and sleeping would give you near instant results.
Anyway, there are my ideas for fixing/decoupling the LONG/SHORT rest system and its connection to the content. Of all of these, #1 would go a long way with little effort.
