I do not care one bit at all how "realistic" it is for chests to be locked or not or always have a key or not, or only be locked inside cities. It's certainly not "realistic" to go into a thousand year old tomb of an evil Source King and find coins which are accepted in modern Cyseal, or health potions still as fresh as the day they were brewed, or weapons and armour in perfect condition which haven't rusted to dust, but I don't see you complaining about those things, do I? The reason is because fun and gameplay balance takes priority over strict realism.
Strict adherence to reality in all things makes for unfun gameplay.
Yeah, no one likes losing items when they smash chests open, but there were also objections to an alternate idea of "lockpicking/key-opening grants EXTRA items" as well.
Lockpicking is an ABILITY. Abilities
should offer advantages to using them, it's called GAMEPLAY BALANCE. If you like the status quo, where Lockpicking is completely optional and offers basically no advantages over smashing the chest open or finding the key, then you should support removing that ability and just having different qualities of lockpick items.
