Vyvyan Basterd
Adventurer
I respectfully disagree. The system has nothing to do with it. Resting is not guaranteed, and the DM has all the power he or she needs to make sure nova-and-resting is discouraged.
"You hear the stomping of feet and shouts in some sort of goblin-speech coming from the woods around you. There are no enemies nearby, but you can tell from years of experience that this is an unsafe place to rest.
The path you're on leads onward, toward the goblin camp. You know if you were lucky enough to reach it and dispatch the chieftain, the rest of the small horde would disperse. The path also leads back towards the town--a day's journey through the forest. A certainly dangerous trek, as you know. You also find a fallen tree trunk on the the banks of the river that flows sluggishly parallel with the path. You may be able to fashion a crude boat from the wood and continue to the city you can barely see at the base of the distant mountains."
First off, this certainly matches my playstyle and my players buy into this, so I agree with you personally.
But a DM has more controls at low levels to prevent certain issues from cropping up. But what happens when the party gains access to more convient modes of transport? Teleporting back to a well-studied home base after carefully studying the location they wish to return the next day? This happens around 9th level with just a wizard in the group. An 8th-level wizard can hide the party in a rope trick for 24 hours with three castings. You could obviously subject the party to danger each time they rest a home after a teleport or each time they exit the rope trick, but it seems awfully contrived at some point.