I honestly don't understand what the problem is. If you're going to be a thief you are going to train in sneak and lock pick, you can attempt the hardest locks with the lowest Security levels. A mage has to level up Alteration and their mana before they can attempt most. I hardly see the problem, when I play a thief I use security and pick locks, if I ever decide to play a mage I would use open lock spells. They both sever their purpose and I fail to see how one makes the other useless. Getting rid of a spell and forcing everyone to use one thing does not make security more valuable, it just gimps everything else

Lockpicking is easy as well....so that needs to be out as well? I mean after all why have lockpicking when we can pickpocket keys?

It's not that easy in Skyrim. The lock-pick mini-game has been changed completely. Lock picking is NOT easy Juromaro, you will need to choose perks and level it up quite a lot before you can open an expert lock. Pick-pocketing a key isn't possible most of the time, which doesn't make lock-picking useless at all. If there is a spell in alteration that opens locks, we have a single spell effect that wins over 12 perks and a whole skill. It's like having the bound sword you summon with conjuration take power from your conjuration skill and not your one-handed / two-handed skill.

Cheese tastes awesome in a sandwich.

How is that different than leveling up Alteration, choose perks, have the mana for expert lock spell, buying the said spells(one for each lock) whereas you really only need one Lockpick for any lock? Taking Open Lock spell gimps people who don't focus on lockpicking. The only thing it does is make Lockpicking something that everyone HAS to have in order to complete the game, because eventually you'll run across a door that needs unlocked and you won't have a key for it.

People are complaining that open lock broke the lockpicking minigame in Oblivion.

Get skeleton key.

Press auto attempt.

In addition, locking picking can be done at any skill level in oblivion. You need a suitable alteration skill, up to 100, to cast an open very hard lock spell, and it would cost magicka too. I thought it was fine. That said, I don't think the loss of the open lock spell is a huge lose either. You don't have to take perks in lockpicking, and stuff in the lockpick tree is good enough that I would take perks in it anyway if I wasn't going pure mage.(+% chance to find gold and magic items specifically.)

Someone else made a good point above, that this also makes lockpicking basically a required skill. Unless significantly less chests in Skyrim are locked than in Oblivion, characters without lockpick will be getting much, much less loot.

The alteration skill does a lot more than just open locks in that case, which means there's no point at all in specializing in lock-picking. Instead, specialize in alteration and have a free open lock spell at your disposal, while at the same time use other effects as well. If pick-pocket, sneak and lock-pick was 1 skill, then I'd say it's OK for alteration to have open-lock. But right now, one spell effect should not win over a whole skill, which is what you seem to want.

If there's a door that needs to be unlocked without a key available to finish the main quest, the main quest was designed poorly. The main quest should not assume you've invested in any one particular skill. Side quests that are built for thieves and/or assassins should need lockpicking, but otherwise you should be able to handle it differently or be able to let the quest fail without harmful side-effects.

according to the manual u can get npcs to unlock things too

but id say u would need a skilled npc for this

Have a companion open locks for you.

You're record seems to be stuck in the same groove - I see how you posted 6,000 times
And your arguement doesn't make sense either

Which part doesn't make sense? It's a matter of simple balance and usefulness.

Note: This is 3 months old thread.

There is absolutely no reason for the spell to have been removed.

That it makes lockpicking 'obsolete' is silly, untrue, and has nothing to do with RPG.
Mages are not thieves.
It is more than annoying that my mage now has to fiddle around with lockpicks.

Redundancy and several options to achieve the exact same thing are always only a good thing in an RPG, removal of options and liniting gameplay is always only bad.

It all depends what you want from your RPG. Do you want it to be balanced? Do you want your choice in the game to weight as heavily as someone else's choice, but in a different way? Meaning, should your choice of either going lock-picking or alteration, be balanced and equally tactical, in different ways? There is absolutely no reason to choose lock-pick if alteration does the same thing, and then some. I care too much about balance to support such a thing. "hey I want the ability to open any locks by attacking it, yeah, the warriors aren't mages or thieves ergo they should also have a way of opening a lock".. There's nothing wrong with implementing that, as long as it's balanced and doesn't make lock-picking pointless. A way to do so is to have it require special perks, not work on every lock, and have it break something inside the chest.

If you are a mage and not a thief, fine, don't open locks. Tada. Why should every character be able to do everything?

There is very much a reason for me not to use lockpicks.
I hate the minigame. Its not RPG. Its player skill over character skill. I like RPG's. RPG's have character skill as the most important factor, not player skill.
Secondly, my mage is not a thief.
Mages have been gimped beyond belief in this installment to the point its just not fun anymore tp play a mage.
Its completely generic and boring. Even other games with generic magic have better balance and more diversity.
Removing features is never ok, it is never fine, it makes for a poorer game.

If you like lockpicking, fine. Use them. You are not forced to use the open lock spell and removing it just hurts those that do like it.

There is literally no such thing as one feature making another 'pointless' as this is not halo.
Its an RPG.

If you use the console command (PSB) It unlocks all spells, and there is indeed an open lock spell and invisibility spell in there. Yet I keep hearing people say there is no way to get these spells otherwise, they're expert lvl spells if I recall correctly.

Nope, open lock spell is not in the game.
Invisibility is, but it is nerfed beyond all possible usefullness and is now pointless.

Wow, that's pretty gay that the spell is in the game, yet not available for actual use in the game without basically hacking, cause PSB unlocks everything, even strange nameless spells that paralyze yourself. lol. had some fun with that one running off of the throat of the world and paralyzing myself mid leap.

Now I wished I played on pc
Though xbox seems to be the one with the least bugs and the UI works decently with the controller, PC users seem to get so much more content lol.

With the CK it should be pretty simple to have an scripted spell with the unlock command, however don't know how to get the lock strength so you can limit it.
Is invisibility weaker then Morrowind and oblivion, any action cancel it.

It doesnt work.
At all.
Unless you sneak and use muffle, but then you dont need invisibility anyway.

This is not halo? No sh1t really? When did you figure that out?

It is, however, a game. A game where balance is very, very important. You talk about magic being nerfed, obviously, it's now much more balanced than it has ever been before. Balance is good. "removing" open lock spell brings balance. This means my thief has at least one thing unique, while mages can do a lot more in past games and even more, without losing a skill. Basically, alteration is for mages both an armor skill and lock-picking skill in one skill, while warriors and thieves must choose two skills to mimic the same effect. Each skill should be worth equally, meaning, if you remove lock-pick from alteration, it's now worth one skill again instead of 2.

There is zero reason for each playstyle to be exactly the same and there is even less reason for each one to be balanced against the others.
Go take your MMO mentality to a multiplayer game.
Mages are supposed to be weak at lower levels and powerhouses at end level.

Magic was the best thing of TES. The freedom, the options, the choice, the customisablity. It is all gone now.
Replaced by pretty looking uselessness.
If that is your idea of balance then it can go die in a fire.
I want fun in my game, not some lame-ass 'balanced' crap.
Balance is just a euphemism for arbitrary hardcaps and limitations. It is the opposite of freedom.

Its that same mentality that cost us acrobatics and athletics.
And you know what? The game has become more boring and more frustrating of it.
Progression is gone. Im the same speed the entire game, and will never jump higher. Therefore, running around or jumping at all is now equally pointless and as frustrating a time waste as in any other game.
Yeah, circling around a mountain for ten minutes looking for that one linear path, giving up and glitching my way up a cliffside is such fun.
The freedom is gone. No longer can I stand on a house to admire the view. No longer are there fun things hidden up a ledge, as the ledge is just background, as there is no way to ever get up there.
So the game has become smaller and two-dimesional too. Look at the dungeons. Oh, they are pretty allright. Just a shame they are all tubes.
Placing insurmountable objects in my path while I can see the objective just there like this is some 1985 platform game. I said it before release, and I was right. It leads to lazy level design.

The removal of open lock means the game has less replay value, as there are less possible builds.

it says in the game that lockpicking allows the character to use up less lockpicks opening a lock.

I'm sure someone has mentioned the tower stone?