I disagree. If there are players who want to sift through all the things spending tons of time searching manually, I don't want to take that away from them. It is a change, though. Allowing for a Perception check saves me from having to play the Hidden Objects game. If I fail, I can opt to do a more thorough search, kind of like a Take 20, or I can move on and accept the failed roll.
And again, I'm calling for limiting inventory with the game providing more gold than useless crap to carry and sell. That's more the main point. In video games, people have gotten used to this idea that they need to pick up and carry every little thing so they can sell it and get more money to buy more cool stuff. That leads to senseless inventory management time wasted. Instead of Larian implementing all sorts of sorting features and new things to make item management easier, I'm saying limit how much people can carry and shift the focus so players don't feel they need to pick up and sell things.
Picture this: You wake up from the pod. Immediately, a Perception checks. You succeed. The tadpole pool is highlighted. You click on it. Cutscene. You run around it, Perception roll. Items on the table are highlighted because I succeeded. I click on them. Tablets tell me about images playing in my head. A Githyanki Silver Sword, etc. I read the items but leave them because as of right now I don't have a backpack so item slots are very limited.
I move on, another roll. Fails. I pause. Was it for a trap or a cool item. I don't know. I don't want to risk it. Move on. I leave the room, missing out on the potion of speed the dead mind flayer has and some gold a dead person has. Oh well. If I'd made the roll I wouldn't have missed these. I could have searched more, but since I failed the roll I might have also wandered into a hidden trap.
Later, I fight imps with Lae'zel. We kill them. After combat, Perception rolls for both. I fail. Lae'zel succeeds. 2 Imps are highlighted with important gear, a crossbow and axe. I need the crossbow but taking the axe would take up a slot I might need for something else. Skip it. Just take the crossbow. Her roll also highlighted 2 mind flayer bodies. I search them. Speed potions and a healing potion. Those are rewarding and important. Take them. Also, some gold. Grab. Move on.
I get up the stairs. Dead bodies. They don't have anything important. No roll is made. I move on. I could search them if I want, but that's up to me. I decide to search just for the heck of it. Hmm. Dead guy has some food. Well. That's not that valuable, but if I needed healing, like at times later in the game, finding food and eating it right there would be helpful. I may not pick it up and lug it around, because I don't have a lot of inventory space, but searching a body or chest manually and finding things like food might provide little things like this to help me on the moment.
Later, I find a backpack. Ah! Now more inventory space is available. Now if I want to pick up and carry SOME food and drinks, I can. Still, I have limited space so I would be discouraged from carrying too much useless stuff. I would only want to fill my pack with things I need, thus cutting down on senseless inventory management.
So why keep all the craps items on the game at all? Immersion for one. Second, pick items up and throw them at enemies. I think that aspect of the game as pretty cool. You can virtually pick up and throw anything. Third, it gives Larian the ability to hide cool items amidst a bunch of useless things. So IF you fail the Perception roll you can either continue to search manually and spend a lot of time hunting, Taking 20, or you can just forget it and move on.
What I don't want them to do is go to the other extreme. In Solasta, for example, all treasure is in highlighted places that are even shown on your map. There is no real searching for treasure. It's too easy to find it. There is no replayability. Every time you play, you can easily find all the treasure. I found that to be unfulfilling also. There needs to be some level of searching and finding. It just needs to be easier than BG3 is right now.
And again, I'm really just wanting less need to carry junk and sell it. Limit inventory. Even if you just use 5e rules more strictly, that would make inventory management so much better. I mean, if I know I can only carry 85 lbs as a 17 strength fighter before my movement gets reduced by 10 feet, I'm probably going to only carry things I really need to carry, especially if the game is giving me enough gold to buy better gear without having to carry 130 lbs of 1 GP items AND if my Ring mail is 40 lbs and my shield 6 already and my axe 4 so I can only really carry 35 lbs more before I'm encumbered.
