Basically, it's like tabletop. If a DM has people search a room in tabletop, they roll Perception. Success means they find stuff. Fail means they don't. If you do a Perception roll for traps, story items, hidden buttons and levers, important books, keys, jewelry, etc., you never know what the failed roll was for. Is there a trap? Is there an important item you missed?
In video games, like you say, if they know they failed they'll keep searching. Fine. Keep searching if you like, or risk not continuing to search. Your choice. If you really want to make sure you find everything, search every nook and cranny. That's your choice.
That's exactly my point though; nothing has changed.
Prior to your suggestion, you need to search every nook and cranny to make sure you find everything.
Implementing your suggestion, you still need to search every nook and cranny to make sure you find everything.
The difference between tabletop and BG3 is that in tabletop, if you fail your perception/investigation check for finding treasure, the DM doesn't follow that up with a description of notable things in the room and allow you to then search them to find the treasure.
I'm in agreement with you that there should be less crap. But they should implement this via actually getting rid of the crap (and the empty containers), not by giving us a percentage chance to highlight the important containers and leaving in all the crap containers.
