I would have to agree with your points that there isn't much usage of lock picking past the town, however the bigger problem is getting lock picks in the first place. As this needs to be fixed first otherwise LP will still be useless.
Currently in the last 2 play through I have done/currently doing I have had lock pick and aside from the few I found in the start I have never found ANY others. Both Arue and the Arrow sellers have never had any LP for me to buy either. Sadly I haven't been able to use my skill all that much.
It would be nice to see more LP being found throughout the world and able to purchase them for a cost. Couple this with the ability to use the skill outside of town and I think the skill credits for this could go a long way.
They should also make some quests that can only be done with LP kind of like with the Talking Pet Talent.
After playing around 60h in game and looting/steeling really everything I found/bought more than 15 lockpicks (only 6 magical unlock-scrolls) total and some vendors do have random items and sell it too (with every character/companion tradeing after reentering town you have 4 random itemcollections of each vendor and higher probability to get lockpicks)
