Well, I'd love that too, but lots of people don't want to gate Long Rests behind consequences like supply costs, ambushes, Druids finishing the Rite of Thorns, Waukeen's Rest burning to ashes. So, it's the reversal, and we're trying to come up with a compromise.
Personally, as a DM, I'd handle long rests exactly like you just said. I'd make in game story consequences happen. I wouldn't even do supply costs unless it was truly necessary, such as in a desolate wasteland or something where food is scarce.
I'd handle it with soft consequences in the form of complications. Long rest spam? Well, Rath did something stupid now to try to stop the Rite of Thorns. Now you have to rescue him if you want his help to rally the druids against Kagha. Long rest spam again? Zevlor becomes desperate and launches a full scale assault on the druids, disrupting their ritual. Now, they can't finish it because they were attacked. Now, the grove is divided, and the druid area is barricaded off with druids protecting their zone and tieflings protecting theirs. Now you have to try to get the two sides talking again and maybe stand down, but Zevlor's assault has bought you even more time. Still, a complication has been created.
That's the kind of stuff I would do as a DM in Tabletop, and that, in my experience, is the most fun way to handle long rest spamming. You provide soft consequences, complications, when players want to do things that abuse a certain freedom.
But, that might be too much for Larian to do. So, we're trying to come up with a solution that most people will like. Having a Rest Point system is at least a system that measures your party's activities during the game. At least it is forcing players to do a reasonable amount of activity before they are allowed to long rest again.
When you get into higher levels, you absolutely need to do something like this. Otherwise, combats will be unbalanced UNLESS you long rest after every fight, which makes no sense from a story perspective.
I would say that any solution that adds additional permutations to the game is out of the question for a very simple reason.
They'll never finish this game. So far, the game has probably the greatest responsiveness of any RPG game I've ever played.
Adding more will not end well for sure, I would prefer them to focus on completing the game rather than adding a billion new options, which will end up with an unfinished act 3 again.
Budget and time are unfortunately not made of rubber.
Ultimately, I think the option to choose would be the best, even if unlimited rest were unbalanced, the people who are not interested in it could turn it off.
