It's actually the reverse for me, with increasing age I've found I'm not as compulsive anymore about seeing everything in a game...if it isn't really interesting to me, I skip parts. Time is precious after all.

Used to when I was much younger playing my favorite cRPGs for the first or second time. The Interplay Fallouts, Sierra's Betrayal at Krondor & Antara, the Bioware/Black Isle Studios classic BG, IWD, PS:T, and other contemporaneous titles like Lionheart, Legacy of the Crusader and Arcanum. This "lawnmower" approach went back to when I was playing Ultima VII and Eye of the Beholder as a kid. I feel like it was pretty common to obsessive gamers serious about bleeding every last detail, experience point, and power-up out of their role-playing games.

These days, definitely not! Don't have nearly the same patience I had as a teenager. When I replay nostalgic favorites I'm not shy about skipping parts that inspire more tedium and despair than fun. And newer titles that are a homage to that era like Wasteland 2, Pillars of Eternity, Atom RPG, Underail, etc. I'm definitely not as assiduous as I used to be many years ago. Now it's more like a "eh, that's good enough" lawnmower approach.

lol I could never resist either!
In fact every time I loaded my save game first thing I'd do is run around my current location
opening all the lockers, mailboxes, dumpsters etc. Once I'd checked them all and collected my
loot them I'd go on with the game.

The upside was I always had plenty of money. :)

Somewhat similar to other points, for me it depends on the game. If the early part of the game requires looting everything and vending it, I have a hard time breaking the habit later in the game when in-game currency is so devalued as to be worthless.

Sometime that does make me resent the game, on occasion. Why did they invest so much time in designing something so worthless? And why am I spending my own time doing it when it's clearly a waste of time.

But...I usually can't stop myself. Compulsion.

Rift had something like that - you could find collectibles exploring off the beaten path. That was my favorite part of the game.

Except for games with multiple dialog options/branching paths(Like the mass effect games, Dragon's Age games, etc) I try to get everything done(FPSs/etc) that can be done the first or second time through....all secrets I can/all collectibles/all maps played/etc.

I also often noclip to see out of bounds areas in older games on PC for even more completeness.

ALSO when playing games I try to get the best outcomes)story/moral) and will often try for such even if I have to reload a few times.In Infamous I had to explore every bit of the map to find pickups, and see what new signs/etc were in other areas. Was frustrating, it was.Eh, just get the highest stealth and kill all who come across you "borrowing" their stuff.easy peasy.

That an australian thing? I am curious to look up what it means now. :)
D3 has some randomized areas, actually.

The problem has never been with killing my way out of a bad situation, it's that stealing everything also means you need to carry all that stuff around and sell it, which takes a lot of time. My solution helped me get through some games, such as Baldurs Gate, where I was close to giving up finishing.

FF 12 has this a ton.....most NPCs(even minor ones) change dialog after every major event. You could go mad going back to most of em every time something happens just to see what they all say.

I used to dump stuff where it wouldn't be lost(if I could) to lighten my load then loot a bit and sell what I didn't want and then pick my stuff back up that I left behind....that and cheating the weight limits.

This kind of thing is what many games are built on, especially online games but also stuff like Assassin's Creed. I tend to blame the consumer, but I do think humans have natural tendencies in this area so you could argue companies take advantage. I don't think I'd want the government in control either though, so it is what it is.

I'm pretty immune to loot and cosmetics and such, but I definitely like exploration and feel a need to "fill in the map" sometimes. I rarely actually do though unless I really love the game.

+1
It was a designed mechanic for games like Ultima, where it was impossible to finish the game without exploring practically everything, including every dungeon (e.g., for marks and cards, in Ultima ]I[). And keeping (i.e.,writing it down) for later use.
There was an arcade game called Dig Dug (also called Zig Zag in some instances), where the PC had a two-handed air pump (with an obviously super-sharp hypodermic nozzle at the end of a long hose) for blowing up subterranean monsters. I used to love digging out the entire screen, to remove all the dirt. :)

As the screen cleared it becaome much more difficult, since there was no earth to hem the monster/s in, and they would move further and faster (a little like killing the bottommost invader to create a fantail in Space Invaders) so it required pumping them up, without the terminal fourth draught, whilst clearing the dirt nearby. Rinse, repeat.

The trick was to create a maze of passages for the AI to lose itself in, whilst clearing the rest of the screen. If you died, the AI would reset and the (last) monster would just make a bee-line for the exit.
Good times!

I make a point to save before I check merchants and lootboxes in the area, when I the save the game. That way, if I don't like the random loot, I can reload. Or when I reload next time I start from that place, the loot is different. This is typical for a game like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic, for instance, where loot is fixed after it is checked. In the same vein, if I have to return to an area, I try to leave the loot for the later pass, since it will be randomly better.

As others have said, I've lost the urgency to explore every digital inch of a game world.
Most games are much larger now. Most have (confounding Chekhov's gun) —— in an attempt for increased realism —— added whole vacant areas, characters and dialogues (I'm looking at you, Harebrained Schemes and Shadowrun Hong Kong) with nothing meaningful to do, no consequential elements and no point, aside from "MOAR!". (It is also possible, however unlikely, that the designers are helping to wean gamers off the urge to explore everything by making the reward less.)
Without random loot, a lot of the pickups in games are duplicates in case players have taken alternate routes to the area; thus there is understandably less reason to loot everything on repeat playthroughs.
It's a compulsion because it brings comfort, like a security blanket or watching the same film multiple times, or listening to the same music. We derive comfort from routine and a predictable outcome: no stressful (unpleasant) surprises.

My issue has always been I love lore/story so exploring or hunting in crates for books/journals etc makes me waste my time. I actually regularly just ignore items when rummaging through containers. The compunction to find anything story-like and devs habit of throwing tiny bits all over the place does make me somewhat reluctant to play some games cause I know I'll be wasting 95% of my time.

Yeah but, contrariwise, I hate that the dialogue changes and I might forget something said that is never mentioned again. That drives me to distraction, forcing me to replay the saved game, in order to check the dialogues again. And again. (I actually write out good dialogue, too.)

and hoarding. i must keep every bit of flotsam and crap i come across. the hoarding makes games with finite storage become an inventory management game in itself. sucks the fun out. yet still i hoard

It kinda depends for me. When it comes to exploring, I usually balance exploration with progressing the main plot on a first playthrough. I try not to get too bogged down with sidequests and exploration. On subsequent playthroughs, though, I'll try to get through every sidequest I can, and I'll explore as much as I can without boring myself to tears. With some games, though, I'll get as close to %100 as I can every time. You can bet your sweet bippy I'll be doing every single sidequest and exploring every single planet in Mass Effect and scanning every possible planet in the sequels, no matter how tedious it gets.

However, loot is an entirely different matter. The first ARPG I ever played was Sacred Gold, and I took my time going through it. I managed to finish the main quest and a lot of sidequests, and I was obsessive with loot. But I was also young and had few responsibilities outside schoolwork, so I had the time and patience to do that. The older I've gotten, the less patience I have for it. I loved Darksiders, but I was quickly turned off by Darksiders 2 because I hated getting a bunch of similar weapons and such and having to spend several minutes poring over every tiny stat difference to see which would be optimal for my playstyle. Same with The Division and Borderlands 2. The former wasn't quite as bad, but Borderlands wore me out. By the time I made it to the final boss and killing it caused seemingly hundreds of weapons to spew out, I just sighed and quit. I didn't even want to mess with all that stuff.

Exploring the map often brings me joy if it is properly designed, independent if shooter or strategy game. For strategy games, there is also the urge to get rid of all enemies (which I don't have e.g. in Wolfenstein 3D). And it's unsatisfying if one wants to play e.g. Pacific General and beat all enemies in every scenario of the campaign but then faces the Burma map where the British have some outposts deep in the jungle with no road leading there. At least the German retreat campaign in Panzer General II is possible without losses.