Players will fight this tooth and nail - and they won't be wrong to do so. As a player I would fight it tooth and nail - or more likely just walk away from the table.
Players will fight the passage of time tooth and nail? Players will fight obvious time constraints (not unnatural ones, obvious ones) tooth and nail?
So if you're chasing the BBEG, and you've found his stronghold. The group gets through the grunts and cannon fodder. The group progresses and gets through the lieutenants - they have the BBEG cornered. But wait, the casters have gone through most of their high level spells! they should take an 8 hour rest rather than proceed to the BBEG?
And when they do, and the BBEG has fled, or summoned reinforcements, the players will get mad? You would walk?
There are good reasons why frequent rests and the five-minute-day have become a thing. It's in the players' interest to seek to have full resources for each encounter, both out-of-game as players seeking to maximize their fun and in-game as faithfully roleplaying the desires and preferences of their characters.
But it's not ALWAYS feasible for the PCs to be at their best. Sure, sometimes, often, whatever. But ALWAYS? And to claim that the players are ONLY having fun when they approach every scenario at full strength?
If this was the case, then every fight is the same. The players use the same top abilities for each encounter and prevail in mostly the same way. This seems boring to me!
Unless you want a game where the players are actually Co-DMs, running 'their' characters as NPCs acting in the campaign's interest rather than PCs acting in the characters' own interests, a better solution is to reduce or eliminate the elements that created the natural push for frequent rests (the "five minute adventuring day") in the first place. Cut back or eliminate alpha abilities in favor of at-will ones in the design, and accept that the PCs will by default be up to full hit points for each encounter
4e has shown that sure, this works . But it's not the only way.
Controlling the pace of play is not artificial, somehow expecting that plunking down and resting wherever and whenever will always work - that's artificial.
It's not the players who are 'broken' and need to be 'fixed' - reeducated into eschewing "munchkinism" and embracing "hard fun." It's the game mechanics that are broken due to being so heavily loaded with "cool and exciting" alpha abilities. Vancian magic was D&D's original sin, here.
I've never once said the players are in anyway broken or need to be fixed - that's absurd. And this "hard fun" phrase, I think you're conflating me with someone else.
I've said the DM needs to enforce the pace of play and not have some kind of artificial framework where the PCs essentially operate inside a time stop spell.
But further. If 5-8 encounters is unrealistic, and it often is (you're not in a dungeon or similar environment, for example), then just use more of the daily budget in designing encounters. Only want 2? make sure you throw enough XP to make that count? Only want 1? throw even more, a big legendary monster well above 4+ level of the group or waves of enemies etc.
