It is always a problematic mechanic in computer RPG
Not always. Wrath of the Righteous uses rests pretty well. With actual passage of time and consequences of such things. Meaning you didn't spam rests to cheese the game.
Wartales also uses rests reasonably well. Again, you bypass the nature of rest spamming by having time advance and consequences for such things (I.e. Quests are time based for full rewards) in addition to more limited resources (Food and gold to upkeep your party. Even more so if anyone happens to have a negative personality trait that requires specific dietary needs like meat or alcohol)
Ah, didn't play either. Tried WotR but I still have PTSD from Kingmaker so I didn't get far.
I hope cooldowns won't come back
Personally, I do.
I find that cooldowns provide a much better gameflow.
I mean, obviously, it all depends how well designed the system is. But personally, generally I find RPG systems with cooldowns (Tyranny, D:OS1&2, Dragon Age) to tend to boil down to repetitive loops - have a sequence of skills you will use in loop as they get out of cooldown.
Though I suppose that an issue that goes beyond what resource is tied to the skills - but with per rest, I find, at least myself, restrain more from using skills until necessary - Pillars of Eternity1 system working probably best for me: some common abilities per encounter, stronger skills tied to rest, with rest having soft limit that can be easily bypassed if need be, but annoying enough to encourage efficient rest pacing.
They might still just continue on with the 1 map per act design and cramming all these things into a single small space which can lead to everything feeling awkward and disconnected (As well as some dissonance between scale and NPC interactions)
I can't imagine them abandoning coop, and for multiplayer single maps seem like a handy feature. I think it is perfectly fine to have their preferred structure (other studios do as well), I just hope the narrative content will fits more naturally with the gameplay experience.
