I don't envy Larian on this one. The resting mechanics, and the things tied to short and long rests, are difficult to balance on the tabletop. Individual groups play D&D differently, and you'll see many DM's that prefer an "adventuring day" have only 1 or 2 combat encounters rather than a slew of more moderately challenging ones. When I DM, it depends more on story than anything else for that kind of thing. The way rests work is going to be different for a party attacking an enemy stronghold versus one exploring a trap-filled, monster haunted dungeon versus one investigating the criminal activities of an evil nobleman. In a single campaign you might have a party do all of these things. Balancing encounters, then, is done across many weeks, months or even years of play-time. The Fighter will likely excel in an adventure where the party can take advantage of many short rests, but isn't able to take frequent long rests. The Wizard would excel in an adventure that takes place over a short period of time - like say one night. The player knows they aren't looking at a battle of attrition, but rather one where they can act freely with their spell slots. And so on.
Larian is tasked with balancing rests in a video game where they are trying to give lots of freedom to the player. That's extremely tough. As it is now, you really have no penalty for taking a long rest after each combat encounter, and so much story unfolds at the camp that you are encouraged to do so both from a perspective of plot and gameplay mechanics. I think the easiest way to deal with it, is to force the player to take the party to a runed waypoint and travel to the camp - only in the camp would you be able to start a long rest. This would make fast-travel more difficult, though they've put enough waypoints around that I don't really see it as much of an inconvenience, and encourages exploration, if anything. Combining that with more short rests per day and having some explicitly timed quests would probably encourage a play-style closer to the tabletop and honestly more immersive. The story unfolding at the camps might have to be toned down and pushed out into the world a bit.
Others have mentioned it, but I think there is a fair chance that Larian hasn't actually puzzled this out or implemented it yet.
To me this is a huge weakness of D&D. Maybe the biggest weakness of D&D. And it always has been. There was only one edition where they fixed this, balanced the classes, and made it possible for every party member to remain useful for many encounters without resting. And everyone hated that edition, so they rolled back all of the (in my opinion, positive) changes that had been made. C'est la vie.
I hate timed quests though, so I hope they don't choose that as their solution. I'd rather they just make resting a pain in the ass somehow, so people don't want to do it as often.
