I am trying to use Blender to create game content like models and environments(levels). Whether creating a mesh/model or a level there's usually multiple assets involved that are getting shared by many other assets like textures, other meshes, rigs and materials. The blender flow seems to involve recreating assets every time they're used.
What is the best way to reuse shared assets between .blends and to make it easy to find these assets? I'm aware of the linking functionality but it does seem a lot of work (finding the host .blend and navigating its structure) when there's lots of links to be made for each .blend. I'm also looking for the ability to change the shared asset in any .blend referencing it and have the change propagated through every other .blend that references it (Example: altering a Material or a Mesh that's being referenced by a level). I don't think this is supported by Linked proxies.
If linking with proxies is my only option I was thinking of having every instance of certain types of assets in one .blend file (Like Materials and Textures or sounds but absolutely not models) to make them easier to find when linking. Is this a terrible idea?