After finishing my 5th playthrough I've come to the conclusion that looting is probably my least favorite activity in this game. It certainly takes a lot of time. There are like a billion crates, barrels and other containers, and you have to check ALL of them, if you don't want to miss the few items that are really useful. This issue has many compounding layers.
Crates. Friggin crates. They have been the staple of unimaginative level design for the last 40 years or so. They are geometrically simple and can take up a lot of space, so they are perfect to fill up every game area no matter its nature. Is it living room? Crates! Is it an ancient temple? Crates! Is it a derelict cave? Crates of course. Seeing a wooden crate in real life is the most "Omg! This is just like in games!" moment you can experience. BG3 does have a LOT of crates everywhere along with its siblings the barrels, and unfortunately these are most often not just decorative elements. They MAY contain items, so you will check all of them. It doesn't matter whether it is the first or 5th playthrough, you probably won't remember which of these have the good stuff, so you have to check them again.
To make matters worse, the UI does not consistently highlight every relevant container type. An empty pouch is highlighted while a skeleton that may have an awesome ring is not. This will result in spending a lot of time carefully investigating every area, and probably still missing a few great items. This is made worse by the very linear nature of the game, since you can't go back to earlier areas to get the stuff you have missed the first time.
This is not a uniquely BG3 problem. A lot of other games also bloat their gameplay time values by making players scrounge for questionably useful stuff. "Sure, this mission may be extremely time sensitive and the zombies are on my tail, but first let me check these crates for crafting materials!" This creates a major dissonance between the story and the actual gameplay. The first priority is to secure those potentially OP items you think you will need for the tough fights ahead. To make things funnier, most of these things you have collected will stay in your backpack after the final boss is slain. Especially the best stuff.
At some point RPGs have decided to let players pick up every useless random item there is. Sure, you can just sell most of these for a tiny amounts of gold (or whatever), but at end of the day, these add nothing of actual value to the game. An empty barrel is functionally the same as the barrel with a rotten egg inside, but the second one creates the illusion of loot diversity.
When it comes to the quality of the actually relevant loot in BG3, one question keeps tormenting my mind: Why so many hyper-niche equipment items? "If a drunk gnome wields this sword in offhand and hits a dazed monster of the aberration type, then that monster will receive the condition of constipation, which reduces wisdom saving throws on average by 0.5." There are so many of these in the game. On the plus side, they are kinda funny. I am absolutely sure that many of these can be useful when combined on hyper-specific builds, but usually they are just disappointing junk loot that ends up at the bottom of your camp chest, because "maybe I need this in the future".
In conclusion: way too much gameplay time is spent on browsing through "meh" loot.
