This is my suggestion:
Add a toggle in the options to select whether food is required for resting or not. If the player selects that it is required, either the amount of food required per rest or the amount of food available in the world (or both) could change depending on the difficulty or as a separate option.
This would let people who want to manage resources do so and those who don’t want to manage resources avoid it. It would also use a system they already created and so hopefully would not be as much work.
I'm not opposed to that.
Still, I would very much like them to just let us camp at proper camp locations, having Long Rest Points as described instead of the weird Teleport to a place that doesn't exist thing. I mean, even IF they were going to do the Teleport to a safe place thing, it should be something like the Grove, because that makes the most sense as the safest location on the map... unless, that is, you tick them off and it's hostile. But then, you have other potential places, like the Dank Crypt if you cleared it, able to be ported to via the first Waypoint you find, the Harper Lookout, which is just as easy to get to via the Silvanus Waypoint, etc. At least having the camps on the map just makes it feel so much more appropriate. And even IF they wanted to keep all those mini-camps, which I totally understand why they would because they put a lot of work into them, at least give us some sort of map location for each of them. Even if that location is something like what is currently a blank wall that they now turn black and label "Mini-Camp" so people know it's a gateway to the camp like in other video games, I'd rather have that than not have any idea where the camp is located.
So, for example, they want to keep the Dank Crypt Mini-Camp. Fine. Add a door and have it labeled Mini-Camp. That would work for me. I'd be happy with that.
AND, why not make them unlockable, almost like something you need to collect in the game. You're going through the Dank Crypt. You find the door to the Mini-Camp. Now you can Long Rest in the Dank Crypt. Otherwise, you have to port back to the original camp that you found, let's say, near where you find the Harper Stash near Astarion's Pod or add it somewhere near the beach or something. So, you don't unlock the first camp until you go out and explore that little nook. Then you find a small cave labeled "Passage to Forest Camp" or whatever. After that, you can always go back to that camp via fast travel, or you can fast travel to any of the camps you've unlocked. You can then decorate your favorite camp however you want with items you pick up in the game.
I don't know. I'm just trying to compromise here because they DID build all those mini-camps. Granted, if they'd done what we wanted to begin with, they wouldn't have had to, but I'm all for not undoing something they put a lot of work into. Just attach them to something or drop them somewhere on the map or both.