You don't get the idea. I am a new player. I don't know that I can find a thief somewhere far away from here and I don't want to break my weapons while trying to open the chest. All I feel is dissapointment that the chest can't be open. But if I open it right now and hear something like "uhh that was hard. I am not sure if I can manage some more of these without learning thievery" from my main charecter, I know, that in future I may need a thief or points in thievery. The game should be newb-friendly.
One thing that RPGs in general taught me is if there isn't an immediate solution, one may present itself later; and yeah, I'm one of those people who has to learn it the hard way! In the case of this chest, I decided to pick it up and lug it about until a means of opening it presented itself, but otherwise I would've just gone back later.
I do get your point about it being accessible to newcomers, and some games can be very oblique for those not already immersed in the relevant knowledge and jargon; but there always has to be a balance: if everything was linear and immediately doable, it wouldn't make for a very interesting game and would have little replay value.
