One of the problems out here is that people kinda keep separating Long and Short Rest mechanics as if they are separate issues. They are 1 issue.
Bottom line is, for Short Rest to even be valuable, Long Rest needs to be discouraged and Short Rest promoted. As is, there is no meaning in short resting because you can long rest as much as you want without any penalty at all, and the cost is so astronomically low that it hardly limits long rest in any way.
So why bother short resting? There is literally no value in it.
There could be meaning to short rest if long rest is forbidden under certain circumstances. To make the entire game revolve around long term ressource management would mean to build the entire map differently after me. Just leave it as it is , make some " management challenges" here and there for those who enjoy it and problem solved after me. Best option they have UNLESS Larian is planning a drastically different game to what EA is currently showing us. I doubt it though.
