To LostSoul; If you were talking about BG3 specifically, then yes - impersonal +1s and potions are by far the majority... but you said 5e, not BG3 - and so when you say something is the case for 5e that is a heavily negative element of something that Larian have done with BG3, I do feel the need to correct that.
As for sparsity of loot in 5e as a system - I'm not entirely sure where folks draw that commonly repeated idea that there's some kind of developer push towards fewer magic items... it's not the case. The attunement system was designed to limit the overload of powerful magic items making up the majority of characters' powers, but that's it; it has no bearing on the amount of magic items available and generally present in a space, and the lions share of magic items that exist do not require attunement. the system doesn't encourage low/no/few magic items unless you're choosing, as DM to play in a setting or space that has that stricture... which the forgotten realms is not.
For those curious, here's some details from the DMG regarding magic items and their prevalence, in the 5e system:
You can hand out as much or as little treasure as you want. Over the course of a typical campaign, a party finds treasure hoards amounting to seven rolls on the Challenge 0–4 table, eighteen rolls on the Challenge 5–10 table, twelve rolls on the Challenge 11–16 table, and eight rolls on the Challenge 17+ table.
Each roll on the 0-4 table hands out on average ~2-3 magic items, the 5-10 an average ~3 slightly better and/or 1-2 more powerful ones, the 11-16 an average ~6 minor and/or a couple of higher power items, and the 17+ between 1-8 strong or high powered items. And that's just on the horde tables, used for major quest completions and exploration goals etc. Individual finds outside of that are separate.
Overstocking an Adventure
The magic item tables in this section are based on the number of items the characters are expected to receive, not the number of items that are available in an adventure. When creating or modifying an adventure, assume that the characters won’t find all the items you place in it, unless most of the loot is in easy-to-find locations. Here’s a good rule of thumb: an adventure can include a number of items that’s 25 percent higher than the numbers in the tables (round up). For example, an adventure designed to take characters from 1st to 4th level might include fourteen items rather than eleven, in the expectation that three of those items won’t be found.
Behind The Design: Magic Item Distribution
The Dungeon Master’s Guide assumes a certain amount of treasure will be found over the course of a campaign. Over twenty levels of typical play, the game expects forty-five rolls on the Treasure Hoard tables, distributed as follows:
Seven rolls on the Challenge 0–4 table
Eighteen rolls on the Challenge 5–10 table
Twelve rolls on the Challenge 11–16 table
Eight rolls on the Challenge 17+ table
Because many of the table results call for more than one magic item, those forty-five rolls will result in the characters obtaining roughly one hundred items.
Generally speaking, though, in video games, the density of magic items is quite a bit higher than in PnP campaigns, because they have to put that over-stocking principle front and centre to account for every possible player's needs or wants, as much as they can, so it's to be expected that there'll be a higher density here either way.
