Blue
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
The theme I sense here is that it seems many DMs look at 6-8 encounters and immediately think 6-8 Combats.
The point being discussed with changing the rest periods is resource recovery, part of resource management and attrition. If encounter is too general of a term that it includes both a high and low/none resource usage challenges, let's drop it for more precise language.
When I talked about the balance point for encounters, I explicitly was using it as synonymous with combat encounters. That 5-6 originated with the DMG 6-8 as a guideline, but it's gained through experience at my table. That's also why it changes at my table as the levels go up - for example 1st level casters really don't have a nova at all.
A non-combat challenge in general* doesn't move the needle of resource usage for what I was talking about experiencing at my table. Combats are much heavier resource drains then other challenges and scenes, and are explicitly what I was counting in the experience of the numbers I put up in my post.
(*And if a challenge does use a lot of resources, then count it so. Just talking in general.)
That's part of the reason why the one week long rest was such a good fit for me. As I mentioned we have sessions go by with plenty of challenges but no combats at all. So it get to the number of combats (read: the amount of resource attrition) my table desires, considering that I have a lot of challenges that don't turn into combats could easily be 15 or more total challenges. Trying to every day fit that between sunrises just to meet the attrition level the mechanics are balanced around are just ridiculous.
When I look at 6-8 encounters now, yes several might include combat, but certainly not all. As the Angry GM points out, ...
What the Angry GM points out are completely valid points and definitely things DMs should think about. But when we move the focus back to resource usage, they fall mostly into the side of no/low-resource challenges so aren't really talking about the topic of resource management and recovery we're discussing here.
So if my tables wants 5-6 combats per day, with 1-3 as low and 9+ as lots, and I have 3 combats and 5 non-combat encounters that use minimal resources, then the day is low combat. Even if Angry GM says that's 6-8 "encounters". I should have a corresponding 9+ combat (plus however many non-combat challenges) as well some other day, so both long-rest resource classes and at-will resource classes have real chances to shine.
And have plenty of other periods near the 5-6 combats plus X non-combat challenge that at my table the at-wills and the long-rest recovery classes balance against each other.
And for me, it's both easier and makes more narrative sense if I don't try to always stick in that number of "encounters" between sunrises.