Oh no. I agree that it is the biggest time waster of the entire game. It is a pain in the butt. That's why I prefaced it by saying that finding the balance is not easy.
My main point is that it makes no sense to even have all this excess junk loot if there is no real purpose to it other than to have some sort of quick send to camp and then quick sell function or something like that. Why not just make it so that that stuff doesn't even exist and players just get more gold instead? That would cut down on all the extra Inventory management.
If they're going to keep all that extra junk, then there needs to be some purpose for it. Whether that's a restriction on when you can send to camp or quick sell or whatever so that you have to carry it for a time and therefore encumbrance matters or whatever it is that makes it purposeful.
For example, I came up with an idea that short rest would also maybe cost camping supplies. That would make it so that you as a player might have to carry at least some with you while you travel but you could send the rest back to camp. That gives purpose to actually carrying the items around with you.
Another example for purpose with all this useless junk items is that you might be able to use them for crafting purposes. That would give you a reason to still carry some with you as opposed to just sending them to camp. If you could melt all the metal spoons down and so forth and use them to forge weapons or armor, that would at least give a purpose for you carrying them around so that when you find a workbench or forge you can use them as crafting items.
I am all for cutting out the tedious nonsense in games like this. I get why they made fast travel the way they did. It's a huge time waste to have to constantly painstakingly run around from one place to another especially when there are no Random Encounters. What's the point of making us walk or run everywhere if there's no encounters or anything that'll stop you? It's just a waste of time.
Likewise, if they come up with a better reason why you even need the junk in the game, then having a better send to camp just makes the most sense. Multi-select and pick what you want to send and hit the button. Absolutely.
But again, that's only if they're going to actually give us purposes for each of these useless items that were just going to sell later. If all they are in the game is items to sell for a few measly gold pieces, just give us more gold and cut out all the junk.
