This is unfortunately the case.

Arena had passwall.

And let's bring it back. The more magic variety the better. This game has like 10 spells per skill for [censored]s sake.

You have either never played the previous elder scrolls, or never played a mage type character in Elder Scrolls.

Off-topic abit: Actually if you have played other rpgs, they have spells that let you pass thru walls too.
Eg: (Might and Magic: Etherealize i wonder if anyone still remember the old M&M rpg series)

For me, i accept the decision that Pass thru walls and levitate may break the flow of the game,
but i feel walking on water, unlock spell, spellmaking should have been included.
Its not as if you could walk on water indefinitely, the more powerful the spell, the more magicka you use up.

I was kind of surprised this spell isn't in the game. Lockpicking should NOT be a skill tree, it should be a branch in the stealth tree if anything. Of all the things to not remove/simplify this one is the biggest puzzle.

The fact that the Towerstone lets you cast a spell that does the same thing and is already in game clearly indicates that it is not an overpowered feature here; regardless of the fact that all previous TES games had it.

There's a lot of questionable character build/tree decisions in the game it seems. Still, mods will fix that.

Not to someone who wanted to practice lockpicking . "I can't imagine a use for something" is a statement about the speaker.

Actually, I played em for years (not non-stop, of course), and 60% time with a mage. Starting from 2003 (or was it 2002? I'm not sure). (yeah, I didn't play Daggerfall, but actually planning to do so soon. Watched some videos and enjoyed the amount of different skills and character building possibilities it has)
And I never felt that mage was way stronger then the warrior (was min/maxing both of them). But it really felt like a _magician_.
Alot less of that feeling in Skyrim.

Waterwalking is the main reason I got into Morrowind...I had a hard time figuring out what I should do so I always ended up quitting, but the coolness of waterwalking kept me coming back. Plus the epic music.

Magic is very cool in this game but I don't see why they took away some of the cooler aspects from past games.

Bound weapons lvl the weapon skill + conjuration, so an unlock spell would still lvl lockpicking probably.

EXACTLY!! why would they remove the unlock spell, yet put an exact same effect on the Tower stone??
Wouldn't it be better to remove it all completely?

Its a bug, it has to be, i just cannot think of a logical explaination why they would remove the Unlock spell.

I love Skyrim alot, but this really grinds my gears lol.
Roleplaying as a pure mage, i feel so UNCLEAN using a lockpick! Gahhh!!!

I support the reintroduction of the Open Lock spell (at the very least), and also agree that too much has been taken away from the "flavor" of being a mage, from Morrowind through Skyrim.

Open Lock SHOULD be in the game... if the developers didn't have enough time/resources to add it before release, then they should add it, along with many other missing spells, in a DLC. There is no harm in giving players two ways to open locked doors and chests, especially when Open Lock spells could be made to have very high magicka costs, therefore requiring the magicka cost reduction perk specializations. We understand that maybe Bethesda wanted to give more legitimacy to thief archetypes by creating entire trees for lockpicking and pickpocketing, but this should not have been at the expense of other viable OPTIONS for play styles. Water walking is another spell that greatly contributed to the "magical" feeling of Morrowind play, which has also been taken away for no good reason.

Clearly, Bethesda has put much love into the creation of Skyrim, and it represents a dramatic improvement over Oblivion in nearly every way. But we simply fear that our magical options have been taken away for the wrong reasons, such as a tendency to go for style over substance (for more immediate commercial appeal), and we are hoping that this is a trend that will not continue into successive titles.

Someone should start a poll - Bethesda will eventually take notice and respond accordingly, as they did with Oblivion's leveling problem (and general design) in addition to a host of other legitimate complaints, i'm sure.

Bring back Open Lock!

Well sure, it's different from the other games and maybe even breaks the lore a bit there.. But at least they tried to create balance between skills Now lock-pick is actually worth spending perk points into, instead of focusing on alteration, which also works in combat and has quite good perks too with passive defence against spells. If you are on the PC, you can easily break that balance by modding in an open spell if ou really, really want it.

Forget that, want to hear a creative application for the lock spell?

In Morrowind at the corner club in Balmora you have to kill 5 people at once. I managed to lock 2 of them away in the rooms first before going to town on the rest. That made a difficult fight more manageable as well as funny, listening to them trying to get out of the rooms.

I did that on more than one occasion though sometimes I would have to pickpocket the key first if they had one.

i want my feather spell back

I think people are too clingy to certains spells. Learn to do some work , for ex lock picking.
No offence intended.

I want feather and open lock...

Alteration Magic made Security completely obsolete, especially in Morrowind (it wasn't as bad in Oblivion). While it would make sense that a Mage can do everything, and more, I'm glad that they decided to make Magic a little bit more limited in its function.

THIS! and water walking..

Oh alteration what has Bethesda done to you... :sick:

When I played a thief in Oblivion, I never used alteration, I used lockpicks.

I have the perfect solution for this people. Let's all stick to Oblivion and Morrowind and wait until they fix this game. :shocking:

You DON'T have to stoop your superior magic using self down to manually picking a lock like the low-born thieves.

You also don't have to have the stuff in the locked chest :whistling:

This is what needs to change

1) Each level of lock picking perks should allow automatic success
eg: 1st point in means you can unlock any novice lock automatically without trying

2) Alteration needs to have leveled lock opening spells.

The difference between the two trees?
-You can still lock pick ANY lock higher then your perk level, but can't do this with magic.
-You cannot get magical perks like the lock picking tree has, like more treasure or open lock in plain sight.

Also, seriously, people are arguing about limiting mages in a SINGLE PLAYER GAME!!!!! What is wrong with you?

Exactly. If you noticed, it's not about the balance between different archetypes, it's about immersion. I personally don't care how strong warrior is compared to a mage, or how strong thief is, we're not in MMO. I don't care if warriors get their 500+ damage single handed weapons. This is not what matters. What matters, is the balance of said character vs The World, the game itself. And the ability to interact with that world under your chosen archetype, which significantly affects the immersion you get with your character.
What me, and I guess many others loved in TES games about mages and character development in general? The amount of choices they have, the amount of things they could do. And starting from Morrowind (don't say for Daggerfall, didn't play yet), they're getting constantly cut down on that. From personal experience I can say that that severely reduced the very "feeling" of being a mage, not just fireball thrower.

I remember some of first moments in Morrowind where I started to play as a mage after playing with warrior - it was like "Oh, I can do that! Yes, I'm weak, low hp/armor, easy to kill, but I can do that! and that! (like, skipping part of the dungeon cause I could just make myself levitate. or visiting Telvanni towers, etc)
Not too much left of that feeling. Magic became mainly combat-oriented.

Your loss, what can I say.

There's no reason to use lockpicking in oblivion. It's like deliberately using rusty iron gear when you could use daedric weapons.