As you know, the only way in Oblivion to get to a fence to sell stolen items was to join the Thieves Guild. But what if there was a crooked shop owner or 2 in one of the cities that you could find via rumors to sell stuff too. This way, you wouldn't have to carry around a few of those valuable stolen items while trying to track down the guild, if there is one. These independent fences could have drawbacks like they don't have much to sell to you(picks, weapons, etc.) or since they know they're the only one you got they buy for considerably less than what a Thieves Guild guy would do.
Give your thoughts about it.

How about just let us sell stolen items to regular merchants? Why can't I steal something from one merchant in one city, then sell it to a different merchant in a completely different city?

I think you just shouldn't be able to sell items back to the same person you stole them from (they should call the guards if you try to).

Absolutely. But one thing -- how do the shopkeepers know what's stolen and what isn't? Hopefully, we won't need crooked shopkeepers -- we'll be able to sell our stuff to normal ones, so long as we didn't steal it from them, like in MW.

Ninja'd.

The system should be exactly like this.

I say it should be fine if you sell stolen items to fences or shady merchants in your own town and regular merchants in other towns. And if you steal high-profile goods (the Queens locket) then you should need to wait for it to cool down then sell it to a fence.

Yeah, I hated that. You could steal a strawberry from a house in Bruma, zoom all the way to Leyawin across the map, and shop keeps won't buy like it has an imperial watermark on it or something.
Assuming you still can't sell to honest merchants, I think the "crooked" store owners would be necessary fences until the thieves guild is found.

I like the system of just being able to sell stolen goods to unwitting, honest merchants, but to stop that system from becoming an easy money maker, I think if you sell too many stolen goods to the same merchant, they should be more likely to figure out that the stuff's stolen and tell the guards about it.

^^ im all for this

My idea

-If its worth more then 50-100 gold then it will follow this

- Sell it anywhere anytime within 6 hours (if you were not seen by anyone)
- After 6 hours are up "rumors" will start up making no one in the town cautious, if you attempt to sell it they will ask you "where did you get this?" if your skill is high enough you can sell it if not they will deny
- After 12 hours are up it will be considered stolen in that town, no one will buy it (unless their crooked like the corpios coinpurse guy)
- If its a very valuable item (over 200 gold) in 3 days the nearest town will no buy it then repeat this step
- Once ALL the towns are aware however you will not be able to sell it even to a fence because it is so hot. But you could sell it to a traveling merchant for a lower price then what its worth that shows up every week or two.

I like this idea too. If we could just jump to the next town to sell everything that's stolen then thieving would be too easy and it would make looking for the guild pointless since you don't need their fences. (Unless you just wanna do their quest) But a risk like that in selling to honest merchants would make it challenging and fun, plus be more of an incentive to locate the guild.

If i steal something in a town, and then tries to sell that in that town the word could very well have gone around about a stealth of said object and it would make sense if they get suspicious of me when I try to sell that kind of item. But if its not something "famous" it would make sense being able to sell it to anyone somewhere else.
Being a stranger in a town and something being stolen there could also make the guards suspicious of me and maybe checks me for the item in question. it would make sense to get out of town and lay low. shady mercants and fences for non guild members would be great.

It should depend on the rarity of the item. If it is something expensive you steal but not uncommon then how can t hey know? if it is some rare family sword or a painting in a mansion I can understand. Maybe if there was a check against the amount of items like the one you steal in the game and if only a few maybe you have the chance of getting into trouble.

I also think there should be independent assassination. The dark brotherhood should not just know you are a killer because you murder someone, not if you are real good. Maybe it could create some side quests with conflicts between guilds and rogue work.

I agree with the general direction of this thread. You should be able to sell common items to anyone, and more specific items to fences...

Now with the really common items...you might even be able to turn around and sell them straight from the merchant you stole it from....

Scenario: I am sneaking around a merchant's shop and without being noticed and *swipe* there goes (a strawberry?) and walk up to the merchant and sell a strawberry...how would he notice it's his strawberry that fast?

Isn't that how it worked in Morrowind?

I think this is a pretty sweet idea!

That's why the crime models in previous games are so stiff and flawed.

I'd like to see a system (this is however based on Oblivion's system, for all I know the Skyrim system is completely different) where the "stolen" tag of an item is both regional and temporary, depending on its value and type. For example, a stolen apple would have its stolen tag removed in an hour, or immediately vanish if you move away from the region of the theft, whereas the tag of a stolen unique sword might take months or more to vanish, and be marked as stolen in an increasing area.

Also, merchants should be more flexible, not simply buying everything or nothing. They have their responsibility number, and based on that they would consider buying a stolen item, also depending on how "hot" the item is and much profit they would gain (perhaps being more inclined to buy at heavily discounted prices). They might also report the player. Perhaps owners of stolen items would offer rewards based on their wealth and the item's value, which could influence the merchant in reporting the player.

It's exactly how it worked in Morrowind.

As Ectoplasm says, though, if they made the "stolen" tag fade over time, and only apply locally, that'd work too. Some merchant says that their diamonds were stolen, so everyone in the town is carefully checking all the diamonds sold to them for a week or so, but after that the memory and diligence fades, and outside that town no one cares.

In Oblivion you can sell stolen goods to the publican at the Inn of Ill Omen regardless of your faction with the Thieves Guild. He only has a limited amount of money (like most publicans), so you can't sell expensive things for decent money unless your Mercantile skill was sufficient. In the end, he can be a passable fence, but the Thieves Guild fences are obviously preferable, especially after reaching higher rank.

You can purchase lock picks from the guy who hangs around outside the north east wall of the Imperial City.

Selling stolen goods to this person does not change the value of stolen goods you've sold to the Thieves Guild fences for the purposes of the Independent Thievery quest - nor should it.

There was a guy in Oblivion named Shady Sam outsided IC that was, you guessed it, shady. He wasn't part of the TG, he sold poisons and lockpicks, and he bought stolen goods.

this, the OB approach really turned me off of doing any thievy characters since I would have to go through more process and beuracracy than just dungeon diving (for a better value too)

I think the easier thing would be to have what they did in Fallout 3 with stolen items. You could sell them to merchants but not the one you stole it from. I don't know if I would want every merchant to be able to buy stolen stuff but have a good amount and certainly more then Oblivion.

I suspect the dev team has already come up with an ingenious solution to this problem along with the telepathic guards thing and the reason we haven't heard anything yet is because they've been working out the kinks, evaluating different permutations to make sure it works.

EDIT: Todd has revealed in http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/04/25/skyrim-the-elder-scrolls-evolved-video?__sf=1303783223 that Skyrim will have:

• New Crime System
  
• Different Types of Jails

The way i see it with this issue is that you cant really think too logically with it. Yes, i agree if nobody sees you take an item ,then in reality, you should be able to just skip town and hawk it for coin. But the problem is that the game becomes unbalanced and i doesnt even pose a challenge to break into someones house or even a castle private quarters and just grab everything.. I believe the way BGS has designed it ( in oblivion) was a decent way of balancing it.

Making stolen items easier to sell makes being in the thieves guild (or focusing on thievery) slightly less useful. However an idea sparked into my head. What if independent thievery got you in trouble with the thieves guild? (provided their in the game im not sure.)

The problem isn't really that you can sell your stolen goods wherever you want. The problem is that it was too easy to steal things. Instead of making the thievery system engaging and difficult, they decided to add an artificial limitation on how you could sell stolem items. The way to balance the stealing system should be to make it difficult to steal things, not difficult to sell them.

My proposal:

First of all, lockpicking should be in real time, and you should need a high security skill to reasonably open hard locks (if there's a minigame, don't stop time, but do make it more dependent on your security skill. Maybe there could be a perk that slows down time while lockpicking). Sneaking should be more dependent on lighting and sound as well as your sneak skill.

Commoner houses should be easy to break in, in areas with low guard activity, and contain very little valuable loot (maybe only 1 or 2 slightly valuable heirlooms). The bourgeois should have houses in better guarded areas, with harder locks, and perhaps some loud guard dogs, but you can find more medium loot. The aristocracy should have houses in extremely well guarded areas with difficult patrol paths, very hard locks, guard dogs and hired guards, and the valuable loot you find should be something you really have to work for. Places like castles/palaces where the highest of the nobility live should have very good, non leveled loot from the start of the game, but it should be extremely hard to get. The should be guards all over the place, and the areas where they store the best loot should be off limits to the general public, requiring some serious sneaking and lockpicking to get to without being caught.

Merchants should get very suspicious if you go into secluded areas in the back of their shop, especially if you're sneaking around, and they should ask you what you're doing or kick you out if you're being very suspicious. The majority of shops should have at least one hired loss prevention guard (not just a repurposed city guard but more like a mercenary).

Common items below some threshold value should be unsellable only to the person you stole it from. Perhaps very valuable or unique items could become unsellable to honest merchants in the city after some amount of time depending on their value (maybe a week for 1000 Ivalue, 24 hrs for 5000, or something like that). But I don't really think there should be news of the theft spreading to other cities except for maybe some extremely rare, unique items, and I do think that every city should have some less honest merchants that will buy something even if they know it is a stolen item from the shop next door.

In fact I really think the two things that would balance the stealth system better than the thieves guild fencing system would be guard dogs that can bark and alert nearby guards, and lockpicking that doesn't stop time. Honestly the save system is partially to blame, as my thief characters almost never get caught because I can just reload my save if they do. This lets them easily get just about anything they want. I think the best solution would be to make it almost impossible to steal valuable things with low stealth skills, so even if you reload a save you probably won't be able to snag what you want.