Excuse me, but how is it worthless? It might be less preferred by one as opposed to Personality or Weapon skills but for a sneaky non-violent playthrough I'd say it's a must.
I've recently taken to distracting NPCs with one of my characters while opening doors with another one (I haven't played the game on development stage so it's a feature I never suspected about and I find it very realistic and therefore awesome). You cannot, however, bang those doors open because of the sound produced. You either open the unlocked ones or leave empty-handed (in my case, as I don't have lockpicking).
The thing is, even if you put several points into Lockpicking, you'd have the same outcome. I actually tried it out, and the result was me going through the game sneaking up on doors and chests, consuming a lockpick, and having it tell me that my lockpicking skill isn't high enough. Which is kind of like what happened to you with zero Lockpicking investment, except it didn't consume lockpicks or ability points.
I imagine lockpicking might still be able to work, but it must be the kind of thing where you need to invest ability points in it as well as find some gear to help pump it - which means without some luck in terms of gear RNG, a Lockpicking character doesn't receive any payoff whatsoever on investment.
I feel part of the problem here is difficulty in creating a consistently successful Lockpicking character. This would be alleviated if 1) there was craftable gear which gives bonuses to Lockpicking, similar to Tooth Belt/Amulet/Rings for Charisma, and 2) there was a Talent which boosts Lockpicking.
However, I feel the biggest problem is the inability to retry: you just get the dreaded "Lockpicking level too low." Instead, there should be some degree of RNG to it: 25% of -1 to your Lockpicking, 25% of +1, 50% chance of no change. You'd only get the "Lockpicking level too low" message when you would need more points in Lockpicking before a success is possible. This way Lockpicking characters would get some degree of feedback from the game regarding the need to put more points in Lockpicking prior to getting utterly stumped the next time they wander into an object that needs it.