I think there needs to be a clarification. No one wants Limited Resting. This means hard core you can only rest X number of times. If you need more, sucks to be you. Reload. You're out of Long Rests. A true limit would be what they've done to Short Rest. 2 per day is all you get.
What many are asking for is a Long Rest mechanic that discourages resting too often. Allowing Long Rest without any consequences makes Short Rest practically pointless. It is currently literally only a Quality of Life Rest button so you don't have to go to camp and have dialogues, but you still get some healing.
Likewise, no penalty for spamming Short Rest makes Long Rest less important. Some we just want both me mechanics to have value.
Basically, why should I Long Rest instead of Short? Why should I Short Rest instead of Long? Give me valid reasons for both; strategic reasons why I need to do both. As it stands, there is no real strategic value to Short Rest because you can Long Rest whenever without any reason to not Long Rest. In fact, Long Rest is promoted in various ways.
Food cost, however, does actually add some value to Short Rest. It doesn't cost food. But, if food is in such abundance, it still adds no value then to Short Rest. So, the true issue we actually have right now is that food could work to dissuade Long Rest spamming and this make Short Rest more important if food wasn't so abundant. But then, if you don't supply enough food, you could soft lock players.
Food could still work, but it needs to be given a lot more strategy so players can weigh their choices and the choices are meaningful.
I'll let you know another idea I had later. Gotta run.
You don't see one problem?
If there is no rest limit, food is unlimited. This means that you can do anything and it won't solve any problem. The only way to limit rest is to introduce a hard limit or some CD. The latter will not work completely on BG3.
Another way to reduce it is to make it so annoying that the player won't want to use it (PoE1 and Pathfinder tactics).
