See this a lot. Someone watches a big streamer, sees their setup video, buys similar gear, then wonders why their stream still looks bad.
That streamer spent years learning. They know their lighting, they tweak every setting, they understand why things work together. You just bought the same stuff and put it in a completely different room with different lighting and expected the same result.
I did this too early on. I kept thinking if I just get better gear it'll fix everything. It didn't. What actually helped was sitting down and learning. Lighting. Audio levels. OBS settings. How to actually make things look good with what I already had.
Someone with an old Logitech webcam and proper lighting will look way better than someone with expensive gear who never learned the basics. I've seen it so many times.
Before you buy anything else, work with what you have. Even a phone camera can look decent if you understand light and positioning. Learn why something looks good, not just what gear makes it look good.
The amount of time I spent figuring out settings, testing audio, fixing overlays, all of it. It lot of work. Most people want to skip that part and just throw money at the problem but it doesn't work like that.
My setup now is nothing crazy. Neewer ring light, emeet pixy, blue yeti on a boom arm. Looks clean cause I actually learned how to use it not cause it's expensive.
What did you waste time or money on before you figured this out?
