i think skyrim should remove the red flag because i hated how you had that, if you stole it, its yours no one could prove it was stolen so how could merchants know? please remove the stupid red flag, and owned property, so if i like someones house and want to take it over i should without owned flag, that way we could pretty much choose what home you want like in morrowind.

No. I liked an explanation that would crop up randomly in conversation under "Morrowind lore" back in TES3...

"Merchants know their inventories much better than you do."

Yeah, there's a bit of weaseling in that. Still, the fences in Oblivion seemed like a good way to handle traffic in stolen goods.

As for freelance thieves...well, that's a tricky and dangerous position to be in, and rightfully so.

It sort of makes sense, but i hate having crap in my inventory that you cant do stuff with like a silver spoon and stuff. Maybe for more valuable items. I think it is silly that merchants will take armor that you got off a dead body and not a worthless cup that you accidentally picked up.

No keep it! Do you know how many times i got buggered over from not having an indicator on certain items in Morrowind? Waaaay to many, so i vote keep it.

Maybe have it based on the value of the item. If you sell them some silverware or a shirt they won't suspect it is stolen. However if you come to a merchant with a sack full of filled grand soul gems or enchanted daggers they might be weary and not buy it so you will have to go to a fence.

Edit: In your inventory you should be able to clearly see which of your items were stolen though

I would say doing it like Morrowind would be better-but when I think about it the fact that selling an item you've stolen back to the seller and the seller recognizing it's their's and reporting it was still pretty ridiculous-more ridiculous in fact than just not being able to sell stolen goods to most merchants at all. I also don't entirely get how the city guards know EXACTLY every single item you've stolen-shouldn't they only confiscate the item they SAW you stealing, if applicable?

I think that perhaps the only thing that a "stolen item" flag should be used for is "unique" or "rare" items that honest shopkeepers and guards may be looking out for-and there could even be some limitation to that based on how likely it is they'd be aware of such an item having been stolen-I.E. being in the same city where you stole the item.

I think the whole law enforcement system needs a HUGE revamp anyway. Like if you commit a minor crime in one city it'll be safe to speak to the guards of another city on the other side of Skyrim. In my ideal system, it would all be based on your bounty and/or notoriety-so committing a few minor crimes in one place will only get you in trouble with the guards in that location-and they might even forget about you after awhile. Committing a major crime like murder or stealing something particularly valuable will get you in big trouble in the place where the crime was committed and over time word will spread across Skyrim until eventually you're a wanted man/woman everywhere. I could imagine the Radiant Story system playing a major role in making this concept possible.

I can also imagine that once you rack up a high enough bounty you may even have mercenaries/vigilantes coming after you to collect the price on your head.

I like this It feels like it would be reasonable.

As far as the flag I feel that a red dot on the side of the object would be sufficient for letting you know what was stolen. Rather then a red hand that nearly covers the item.

Slight variation on TheNord's idea:

Rather than basing it on value, it should be based on rarity and common knowledge. Any unique artifacts and items that are known to belong to certain NPCs should catch the eye of all merchants. Any very rare items (say there are three copies in the game), all of which are accounted for, should also concern shopkeepers. Basically if they can reasonably deduce that it should not be in your possession, then they should not be interested in buying it. That's when you should turn to a fence.

Generic stolen goods — forks, generic books, generic clothing, glass shortswords, etc. — should never be marked as stolen, unless maybe an NPC happens to lose one of those items around the time that you try to sell it, and the shopkeeper knows that NPC. Then maybe they'll ask you, "Do you know anything about this theft?" and depending on your answer and how much that shopkeeper trusts you, they may or may not decide to buy it from you.

It is rather silly that every single store in the world knows exactly which items in your inventory are stolen.

If they actually knew it was stolen and refused to buy it wouldn't they just report you to the guards as soon as you start trading?

It would be better for you to be able to sell any stolen property to anyone with a chance occurence of the store later on finding out that it was stolen and reporting you to the guards.

If you stole things in real life and pawned them, I doubt anyone would notice unless it was a car...this should also be true in a medieval society.

Trying to sell the merchants goods back to him is obviously a silly idea...since you should know you're own merchandise. :facepalm:

Yes people should just not know that an item was stolen unless it is something famous and unique that people would hear about via the graqevine.

This sounds good.

A certain price limit to what is flagged.

below 40gseptims - you get a warning/beating.

Above 50septims - jail/gaurd aggro

From what I gather of the post here, we can have an intelligent system that works like this:

• Stolen items are all marked in your inventory, because you would know what you have stolen.
  
• You can not sell a merchant his stolen items back, because he would recognize them.
  
• You can not sell a merchant the important items stolen from his neighbors, and this can be based on the price of the item.
  
• You can not sell a stolen unique item to about any merchant, as it would be known through out the nation.

So all the stolen items are marked in your inventory, and their previous owner is known to the engine, and their current price for the merchant is also known to the engine. Each merchant has a perception threshold about the price of the stolen items, and he would recognize the stolen items from the neighborhood with prices above that threshold, and he would also recognize the stolen items from his own store and home, and any merchant would automatically recognize unique and universally recognizable stolen items, so those items are automatically removed from the list when we want to sell items to a merchant who is not a fence.

So when you try to sell stolen items to a merchant, the low priced junk, and the other non-important items that you have stolen from the neighborhood are listed as well, with a stolen mark on them so that you know that you are selling them to the merchant, but the ones that he would recognize as a stolen items are removed from the list, and you can lighten your hand without the risk to being caught red handed, bur some merchants are less perceptive that others and you can sell them more items, so you have to find them out yourself.

Each stolen item can have an internal data value of them set to the place that they where first stolen from, and there can be a formula with the merchants' perception threshold and their distance from the place that the item was stolen from, and the item's price to define if they would recognize the item, so that it should be removed from the list, when we want to sell them the item.

So you can steal from a house and sell the junk to the nearby merchant, and go further away and sell the more priced items, and go further away and sell the more priced items there and so on...

For the more important items that you have stolen, you have to find fences, and those people bargain hard, so you can not become rich overnight, or you can carry them to another town and sell them there to a regular merchant, for better price than what a fence would pay.

That's a sound solution IMHO.

Not only does this suggestion make sense, when I read it, it was being spoken to me in Keanu Reeves voice.

Keanu Reeves has also edited that a bit more as well.

I like this idea too. Personally the "flag" on stolen items bugs me, I KNOW what I stole and IF I forget and sell them back to the owner, then I really feel as though I merit the whole bamboozles of consequences that follow. But I can live with "flags" too.

Hopefully advances in the AI will make it to where we don't need the stolen flag anymore. You may not require a fence to sell your stolen items but you will have to be smarter than in Morrowind in regards to who you sell those items to.

You're right, it is rather silly. It's not rather silly that you would know which items you stole. It's also not rather silly that you wouldn't be selling stolen items to merchants for fear of being reported.

@Mumatil: You completely disregarded 41-49 septims.
@Sphagne: Yes, that's what I want, and I think that's what a bunch of others want too.

That. As for common items, they should not be able to tell - unless it's a suspiciously large quantity. Unique items, now, something else entirely. If you try to sell a specific high-powered staff to be found only at one merchant, they should have heard it's got stolen.

*edit* What Sphagne said, except :

Indeed. You should remember what's what. Or let's cut the thing in half, and have an inventory where one can store apart items, so to remember which is which ? It'd be up to the player completely to sort their items right, and would provide a memory help for those like me who tend sometimes to pick up the game three weeks after I last played it.

Maybe replace the generic stolen indicator with the name of the person/faction it belongs to, so you know where not to try to sell it?

Yes, faction can also affect the stolen item recognition formula as well.

This. Mostly.

I agree that a merchant should know their merchandise better than anyone else, and that if I steal a book from a store I should not be able to sell it back. But I definitely should be able to go elsewhere to sell it.

Guards shouldn't know what has been stolen unless a theft was reported to them.

Unique items are exempt and should be marked stolen, mostly to keep Thieves' Guild quests and fences. But, not because it makes any sense. If something is rare and you have it, it doesn't mean people should figure you stole it.

There also needs to be a good way to clear the flag. In Oblivion, you sold it and bought it right back (I use this on books CONSTANTLY). Far better if you could pay a shady merchant or fence (because there should be SOME people who buy stolen crap... and at least one should actually be an informant) to "take the heat off" an object.

For a low-cost book, that's as simple as penning a gift message in the cover, for example. For a rare enchanted sword, it might mean flooding the market with fakes, a considerably more expensive proposition.

Conclusion: certain merchants should buy stolen merchanise. Signs should be dealing in narcotics, operating in unusual and/or hard to access locations, and generally being in a prime location to deal with a criminal element. Some of them should be informants, but not many. These merchants, as well as fences, should have a variable ability to scrub the stolen flag for you. The difficulty should be related to value, but not linear. Premium items should be vastly more expensive to scrub than a simple linear cost. Each merchant should have specialties. Hrodrick the Red can make a weapon "yours" easily, but can't do much to scrub anything but the most common books, while Laenlorn can do bows, but is less adept with potions, and Snow-Swimmer can scrub books in amazing fashion, but is not so good with armor.

Depend. If little time elapsed between the theft and the attempt to sell, the merchant should be suspicious and ask questions, but it could be possible - taking D4rk One idea here - to talk the guy into buying it if your speechcraft is good enough. Too much time, and the theft and nature of the items should be know, at least locally : I can see the guards giving a list of stolen items to the local merchants so no one should attempt to sell them, for instance.

Maybe the fences could work for suspiciously large quantities of items ? Yeah, I know, doesn't mean you've stolen them, there's loot too. But if your reputation is low, the merchants might be wary about buying such quantities from a shady unknown guy, hence the necessity to find someone who would not ask too many questions.

Other factors might be fun too. Like, you're trying to sell jewelery and fine clothes while being dressed yourself as a shady mugger : the merchant might not be as sympathetic as if you are dressed like a nob. Same with trying to unload tons of magical apparatus while looking like a complete barbarian. Past a certain quantity /monetary value, you'd have to look the part if people don't know you.

Okay, I love to disguise myself. So what.

I think there should be a suspicion meter based on factor such as clothing [if you owned an upper class shop and some guy with a knife strapped to his belt, dirty ragged clothes, etc. wanted to sell a diamond the size of a golf ball wouldnt you get suspicious. ow if that same guy had a clean, designer clothes, a rolex, etc. would you be less suspicious.], reputation, relationship with the trader, the price and rarity of the goods, etc. If the suspision meter is high enough the guards are called.

Now different merchants should have different opinions. A greedy upper class merchant mgiht be able to overlook something for a one of the kind object while a lawabiding homeless street hawker might report you. It would take soem research on who the best merchants are for a streight deal, and who the gullible merchants are for a con. Of course a greedy upper class merchant would pay more than a backstreet pawnshop dealer. But they would be a lot more wary and they would call the guards a lot faster if anything were to go wrong. The best price would be from a gullible merchant who doesnt have the leverage [threat of calling the guards] to lower the price. but these would be extremely rare.