Removing the ability for the designers to place 'key only' doors where necessary places limitations on quest design. And speaking as a modder, being able to lock area's that I don't want the player to go is crucial to creating interesting quests.

I like this.

I just cant imagine a pure warrior Orc fighting his way through a dungeon for hours, killing and smashing and blood-letting his way to the end of a zombie infested hell-hole and finding a chest, shimmering under a single shaft of moonlight leaking through a crack in the ceiling. He approaches his prize with a greedy glint in his eye and...woops, he realizes he doesn't know how to pick locks! Does he walk away, kicking at the dirt laughing lightly at his unpreparedness? NO! He DESTROYS that chest and gets his effin' loot!

Why that? Any door which leads to somewhere (as opposed to ones which are purerly ornamental, with nothing but pure earth and stone behind them) can be broken down, in doubt by removing the walls around them. There are even http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battering_ram designed for this specific purpose.

To be honest if I find a door that can't be picked. I'm gonna go wild wondering what the heck is inside. It would have to be something important. I would try my hardest to find the key.

If TES and Red Faction had a baby If only...

if there is 1 door you can not open the game is no longer free roam

In a perfect game, we would be able to bash doors in but thats a bit too much to ask for just yet in terms of where games are technically. so i believe un pickable doors are still required for the sake of game design for the foreseeable future

Some areas should be off-limits to the player due to certain constraints at certain times.... So yes, keys are essential.

You know what? I don't care. In Oblivion, I barely ever even found these quest-specific dungeons until it was time for me to go there anyway, so I was never really bothered.

Post guards in those areas then?

I want to talk about the other side of this (did not read all the responses before posting).
I want every locked object to have a key fitting to it, it makes NO sens for an object to be locked if there is no key that goes with it. I mean how did it get locked?

It never bothered me to find a key, but it would be cool to have some sort of spell, or an option to bash some doors open. Though I could see some locks as only being opened by some mystic key.

* Using the "Lock" spell
* Using a bar on the other side (ok, technically that's "barred", not "locked")
* Locking the door, then destroying the key

Also the possibility that a normal wooden door could be barred from the other side with a message when you try to open it "This door won't open or This door is blocked from the other side" something along those lines I mean I did find it rather stupid that certain doors needed a key to open them...that's why I made a "open Needs a Key on touch" spell in Oblivion. :thumbsup:

Okay for all the nay sayers why? Because you shouldn't be able to enter quest specific places until you've gotten the quest? Who really cares! let me go where I want and take what I want if I want to. Lets just say for arguments sake this was the case and I entered a quest specific Fort and looted it found some cool stuff and left...3 hours later I'm talking to an altmer in Winterhold and he :whisper: asks me to go to such an such Fort and to retrieve this amulet for him...go through all the dialog reinitiate talking to him 1 second later hey guy got your amulet right here, thanks for the quest prize :cookie: !

Now I didn't waste time going through most of the Fort only to be locked out of the last room :swear: and have to return after talking to the altmer :banghead: . Now you may say what if you sold the amulet after you got it...well then you can try and remember where you sold it and go buy it back or say screw the mission altogether and lets not forget about quest items...you can't get rid of them except through the quest.

A door is a door if you have lock picking in a game or magical spells that unlock doors then you shouldn't need a key for any damn thing!.....unless its a magical door that only opens with a magical key...but thats when you take out your magical Battle axe and bust that biznatch down :brokencomputer: !

Bash the door

You don't need to remember where you sold that artefact if you character does.

"He, go fetch me the MacGuffin of Doom!"

- "I think I already saw it. I sold it to {merchant} in {place}. Let me see if {he/she/it} still has it."

That is all well and good for simple fetch quests, but what if the quest is more complicated and requires specific triggers and followers to function?, it would break immersion more to have disjointed dialogue and no chronology for quests than locked doors.

i thought keys were confirmed? it the private demo the reviewers mention the gold clay containing the solution to a puzzle door and i think one even mentions it being wielded as a key... but don't quote me on that.

I'm really not trying to be rude here...but...

Please give an example of one of these complicated quests. I've played well over 1800 hrs in Oblivion and I think almost every quest in one way or another was a simple fetch quest.
Knights of the Nine was almost entirely a fetch quest...Every deadra quest was a fetch quest....Shivering Isles was a messed up fetch quest... I mean think of playing fetch with a dog... you send the dog after some thing and they bring it back... not sure of all the guilds but I know for a fact even when you get kicked out of the Mages guild you had to FETCH a bunch of ingredients to get back in....so please give me an example.

Oh and breaking immersion??? what immersions me into this game IS the fact that I'm told I can go any where and do anything...

True true but the idea to be able to bash the door open and unlock any door if your skilled enough is still good. bashing the door open can have major consequences have to pay for the damages and other ones that i dont need to list :banghead:

Hell no, I got overloaded with keys in oblivion. I do think it would be easier and a good idea if you were able to bash or properly magic a door open, as lock picking might not suit every player.

Perhaps you should have a go at quest building or look at how these things work behind the scenes in the CS and you'll see what JagarTharn12 meant.

That's easy to fix. Script him not to appear until you recieve the quest. Basically, there are a lot of better ways to prevent breaking your game than having un-pickable doors.

I think bashing doors would be good. I see an issue with this though:
You'd either have to make some doors that you can't bash down (i.e. doors between cells), or else you'd wind up with loading screens just by walking.

Also, I think doors that can't be picked are okay IF there's a good reason for it. (i.e. a lock with multiple sets of tumblers, like dual sided keys (i.e. most modern car keys), or even 3-4 sets of tumblers. (I've had a key in the shape of a cross before that worked 4 sets of tumblers.)