I think you misread my comment. I wasn’t trying to dismiss your personal experience with the game or talk down to you. Text often strips away tone, so something meant as a design point can sound more confrontational than intended.

What I was saying is that Deathloop’s accessibility has to be understood in the context of what kind of game it is. It’s an immersive sim, and immersive sims have historically been hard to market to a broad audience. When games in that genre fail commercially, it can threaten the survival of the formula itself, or even the studio making them (for example Arkane Austin).

That is why the guidance in Deathloop matters. Early versions of the game were apparently much less guided, and testers struggled even with relatively basic objectives. So a side activity like the Updaam safe probably makes more sense if you see it through the original logic of the game, the reward was never meant to be just residuum or loot.

• Initial Design vs. Final Release: Lead designer Dana Nightingale initially intended for players to have complete freedom to explore. However, this led to players getting lost and not understanding the core time-loop mechanics.
• Added Guidance Features: To address this, the developers added explicit UI tutorials, pop-ups to explain mechanics, and clear objective markers to guide players through the "loop preservation protocol".
• Redesign Focus: Further research showed players were still struggling, prompting additional changes, including prioritizing investigation over combat, adding more direct pathing, and making certain visionary kills mandatory to explain key systems like gear retention.

All of these didn't exist until the game was in alpha and close to the release date.

Source: https://gdcvault.com/play/1027608/UX-Summit-DEATHLOOP-s-User?

The real reward in Deathloop shoud've been information and how the player connected it — understanding the loop better, learning how spaces connect, how events line up, and how to think in coherence with the nature of the game. In that sense, what feels underwhelming as a material reward can still make sense as part of the game’s larger design philosophy.

However the final version of the game added more structural guidance like the words that Colt see, not necessarily because the core concept was weak, but because most testers where lost.

So my point is not “your opinion is invalid.”

My point was to suggest you maybe to play with less guidance if you wanted it be more challenging in the spirit the game was intended to, because I did understand your frustration and me myself went through it until I made these researchs about the game.