[setr]

More importantly he’s either not tracking weight/inventory size, or he’s not punishing players for burning time. You shouldn’t be capable of looting every possible item, because you’ll inevitably get attacked by more enemies, and you’d run out of space to hold it (and running in and out of the dungeon every ten items should be strictly punished, probably by limiting rations or torches found — and again, tracking time)

So even if you’re being meticulous, it’s just not a viable strategy — you have to focus on the more expensive items.

The key is not that it enables a simple XP system, it’s that it breaks the “kill everything in sight” gameplay loop, and allows you to toss overly-hard enemies at the players (because you’ll get the same reward by finding a workaround). TFA just replaced kill everything with loot everything by failing to follow through more thoroughly. Combat, and leveling, is no longer a necessity — it just opens up more options.

Resource management is fundamental to ADnD’s gameplay — it’s not an inconvenience you can skip. Without it all sorts of bad behaviors are enabled, and often optimal.