In patch 8, I think they spaced events out even further because I only got Raphael's visit at LR6 (long rest 6) and Astarion's nocturnal visit at LR8. Gale only told me about his artifact problem at LR11(iirc).
I like having a save for each long rest so I can go back and try various dialogue choices and in my case, the patch 8 run took almost double the amount of long rests of previous patches.
I really wish they'd find a way to make the sense of urgency (or lack thereof) consistent. Some quests progress if you long rest and some don't. Some can fail. I haven't once gotten locked out of the grove due to the ritual (taking 6-10 long rests before freeing Halsin) Is it a bug or a feature?
I think setting an ingame day/night cycle would really help. An increasingly severe 'fatigue' debuff would also make it clear that it's time to rest. Atm, Tav sometimes interjects "I'm tired. I need some rest" but it can get covered by ambiental sounds or interrupted by other ingame events.
