I think the right level of good loot is important, and in general I feel it should be somewhat rare, or certainly not randomly dropped. Drops should be stuff like potions, scrolls. Wearables, weapons and armor, and true artifacts, should be placed and placed with thought and care (and well defended!).
BG and BG2 were both pretty good in this regard, you would find a good weapon and it would carry you for a long time. Varscona +2 in BG and Carsomyr in BG2 are a couple examples. Flail of Ages, Crom Faeyr are others. BG2-ToB became a little more loot heavy, there were +3 weapons on pretty much everybody you fought, however by that point, +3 vanilla was not good enough for any characters and was just sellable treasure. There were some really good weapons of every stripe (the Cespenar upgradeable stuff), so you would seek out and use the ones that fit your party, so even with tons of stuff around, you would tend to stick with the best weapons for the balance of the game, and upgrade them when you could. And being epic levels, tons of loot was sort of expected.
IWD on the other hand, I found had too much loot. I am not as familiar with that game, but I do remember finding a really good +3 weapon, then using it in just one fight only to find a better +3 weapon of the same type. Everything seemed much more discardable and certainly less iconic than what was in BG series.
