I do think it's probably C, but I don't think it's quite as bad as you fear. Limiting where and how often the player can long rest is probably end state of balancing. Throwing mass testers into a fire pit of no long rests with uneven difficulty and continual changes to the balancing is probably a bad time for Larian. It makes sense for them to remove all limitations on resting for the beta, gather data (not from forums mind) on how players respond and then implement the resting limitations at or near 1.0.
