I’d say it’s all about the feeling your room transmits. You can have lots of objects but they don’t hold any relation or are just scattered around with no purpose. But when you can make your dungeon feel like a scary dungeon, if that’s what you’re going for, or it’s a crazy science lab, and you make it feel that way, then it’s a win. And you’ll transmit that feeling with the objects you decide to get in there, how you place them, the framing, the layout, etc. And then you can transmit even more with the artistic language of lighting and materials. And then if it has animation. So I think the exercise more than an exact count of objects, it summaries this when it says “Even if you’re exactly replicating an existing room, you can still use your creativity to decide what to include, what to exclude, and how you tie it all together!”. But yes, also room that feels very empty wont say much, so that’s why object count is sort of important as well.
