I find the whole yellow paint argument to be stupid. Back in the day, level design was so spartan, that if you saw a ladder, you could resonably infer that you could climb the ladder. Nowadays level design has become so rich in detail that you need a way to differentiate between objects you can interact with and objects that are just placed for fluff.
I liked Day9’s take on the matter.
Day[9] Rant - My Take on the Yellow Paint Conspiracy

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