As many before me, I have encountered the "spamming of long rest in order to trigger companion scenes" and I have some suggestions on how to maybe improve that part. Most likely Im not the first one to have these ideas and probably not the first one to send them in either, but nevertheless, i want to put them out there if not only to highlight that more are of the same opinion!
So, the spamming of long rest: I can start by adding that during my first play through, I was super scares with long rest. I thought that the tad pole would eat my brain and kill me if I took to long. Now I know that that isn't the case, for better or for worse. But I can't shake the feeling that it would be a problem if I did nothing and took a long rest every 5 step of my journey? Or at least that some of the companions would find it a problem and comment on it? So my suggestion here is that: If trying to take a long rest to close to the previous long rest, then one of your companions in your party will say something like "we have rested long enough, we need to press on" and then nothing more happens (maybe even a small cut scene from time to time where an irritated shadowhart tells you that you can't keep resting or an bored astarion telling you he wants to find the occasional bandit to drain). As for the question of what should decide how frequently one should be able to take long rests, im undecided. But perhaps it can have something to do with a certain amount of in game time played in between long rests? Or that the player has to do som minimum progress before being able to rest again (NOT only main story related) ? Anyway, for me it would make sense if my companions, who obviously are stressed about the tad pole situation, aren't to keen on me resting our problems away.
As for the companions and dialogs problem: Simular to the idea with comments from companions on the long rest issue, maybe they can comment on that they want to speak with you when in camp. In that way the player would know that some cool dialogues are waiting and wouldn't need to spam long rest from fear of missing out.
At last I just want to fall on my knees and beg you awesome larian developers to do something about the priority of cut sense and dialogs overriding one another. For instans the conversation you have with the companion with highest approval towards you after the first dream, why can't I address that incident with all of my companions? Something really weird happened and wouldn't it make sense to take a walk around the camp and hear everyone out?
Its an awesome game so far and it really has the potential of becoming one of my favourites (alongside DA1 and ME2) so keep up the good work!
