Half-assed, cargo-cult, implementations of D&D’s long rest mechanic.
D&D’s long rest mechanic, where you have very powerful resources that only recharge when you “rest” for a long time only barely works in the original tabletop game. Most players in that context don’t even play by the books recommendations, but instead go nova on their powers and then rest anyway. It kind of works if there is a strong narrative pressure that prevents you from taking weeks to address the problem. But it turns out players in video games kind of hate timers.
Pillars of Eternity 1 just whole ass cargo culted it into the game. There aren’t any actual timers because players hate them. You can only use your cool powers a few times before needing to use “camping supplies” or return to town. Your max health eventually stops recovering until you take a full rest.
So a full rest is probably significant, right? A serious tactical choice? No, not really. At worst, it’s several loading screens to go back to the inn, a “resting” animation, and then several loading screens to get back to where you were. There are no consequences. Enemies don’t respawn. Quests aren’t timed. It is extremely tedious.
Dark Souls has a sort of long-rest mechanic, in that your healing and spells only recharge when you hit a checkpoint, but that respawns most of the enemies. Now it’s more of a choice, and the game is built around “Can you get from here to there this your resources?” PoE1 didn’t do that. It just felt like someone liked D&D but didn’t really understand anything about it.
I was pleasant surprised they changed the game design to be the infinitely more reasonable per-encounter cadence in the sequel.
Side note: There’s a difference between good and fun. Many players probably had fun with the d&d-like system, but players and customers are notoriously idiots. “A faster horse” and all that. Would they have had more fun with a better designed system? Probably, unless the nostalgia of “long rest” was weighted really heavily in their mind.
At least BG3 had plot stuff happen when you long rest, but that creates a whole separate set of problems: If you are too good at the game and don’t need to rest often, you miss out on the plot stuff.
Gods, I’m so sick of D&D and how much influence it has.