I remember seeing a post about a bunch of cut content people found, one of them being the game is more obvious about a story event ready to trigger at camp and telling you to long rest. That's why your party sometimes make random comments about "Wanting to take a rest" or "That's enough for today I think" when in the overworld, because that was part of the cut mechanic. I think Larian took it out because some players would see it as immersion breaking, but PLEASE bring it back in it's full glory for those of us who can't mod or don't want to yet on our first playthroughs.
In the original BGs not resting would anger party members and you would get a fatigue debuff. This was based on condensed game time. (granted you could actually pause those games to stop the clock). It's possible they were looking at doing that, but the lack of pausing in the game probably made it problematic to afkers.
