I've been playing for quite a while now and have beaten the thieves guild and the dark brotherhood, I've never had to pick a single lock in those guilds despite the fact they are all about breaking and entering, it's go into this unlocked house to kill a guy, occasionally you get a shortcut by picking a lock but it is mostly cruise through with ever needing to, I remember in Oblivion when if I wanted to go through the quests I had to take a few lockpicks minimum or I would be unable to do it.

Why can you be a leader of mages without being a mage? Because Bethesda.

it's streamlined for your convenience.

huh? i feel like i'm picking locks all the time

If there were quests that required you to pick locks, people would be moaning all over the forum that Bethesda's "forcing" them to use skills that aren't part of their "build". ("They say 'play the way you want', and then do this! how dare they!'")


(of course, you'd think that someone playing a character who'd join the Thieves or DB would be one with lockpicking, but some people seem to go out for really wacky concepts).

The guilds and the guild questlines are not written with role playing in mind, there are no hard choices and serious consequences like New Vegas or Witcher. They are made with the crybabies in mind who necessarily want to 'beat' all the content in one playthrough. It's them to blame not Bethesda like someone said. Bethesda is just catering for the lazy gamer who wants to be ubercool, to get fast access to killing dragons and to be 'teh' head of all the guilds with little to no effort.

Yes, I'm bothered by the fact that I can join the mages and become their leader without being one myself. I guess I just won't join them then.

With the guild quest lines being so short, I can understand why someone would do more than one with the same character. I'd prefer they were about three times longer with skill check quests along the way. You can develop any of your skills, so you can always come back later after you've built them up enough.

Don't be the fool to return and complete the last thieves guild quest to replace the "Skeleton Key"!... otherwise prepare to buy lockpicks!!!!

*Master Lock Encountered*
*1 Lockpick Left*

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!

You do have to pick at least one lock in the thieves guild, to get into the first house. An expert one if I'm not mistaken, but i get your point nevertheless. Also, I wouldn't say the Thieves guild questline has been streamlined, it's a lot better than the one in Oblivion and has some pretty interesting npcs. The DB questline is pretty meh, there's no getting away from that. It's pretty bland.

That's not the issue. The problem is in the fact that you, as a player, know that your pure warrior can wander up to the College and casually become the Archmage with no more magical proficiency than the janitor. The game has failed to keep the player immersed in its world by failing to provide believable boundaries with logical solution (i.e. you can't lead the College of Winterhold without some magical proficiency. To circumvent this, gain some magical proficiency and you'll be promoted).

But that's a discussion for another thread.

Actually, the rewards for that quest are far better than a silly master lockpick, especially in a game where it's already pretty easy to pick even master locks at like lv20 lockpicking...





Can't you just fish the key from someone's pocket?

And to top it all off one quest line has you gathering fragments of some amulet, which I was doing as a warrrior, and when I get to the last cave/dungeon for the last fragment, I need to have some advanced mage spell to enter. Now that is plan stupid design on Beth's part.
As for the lockpicking--hate it with a passion, don't enjoy that aspect of the game at all. Nexus has a few mods of varying degrees to assist. The best being http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=219