It feels like they have it almost perfectly wrong, at the moment. If they just rotate it a bit and put in more player controlled activity - a button that does a perception check on a small area, or investigation check on an object and lets us try until we hit a DC high enough to trigger "This is something / This is not something" then people can be as OCD as they want about it. In my last multiplayer game we went to the church with the resurrection skeleton guy. We all failed our checks to find the keyhole to his crypt. We had to leave. There is no other way to get in there or find that keyhole that we could think of. So, now we can't resurrect dead companions. Wtf. We need more tools than passive stats when it comes to some of the most used and highly rewarded mechanics in the game. Yes, it is a bit of a chin-scratcher if Larian decides to throw all of this advice out the windows, for sure.
Just as an aside from the main topic - there's another way down
There's a hatch at the ocean side of the building that's pickable and leads directly down to the bottom level
