Horrible poll options

If I were to play a thief it would be robin hood style, if you wanted evil there was dark brotherhood.

However, I wouldn't mind having more karma decisions when doing quests. (Good or Bad routes)

Would love to have Morag Tong and Dark Brotherhood as factions (or guilds) in Skyrim, but you can only choose one to join.
Dark Brotherhood just wasn't my cup of tea (too cult-like), but I loved the Morag Tong.

On the subject of Thieves guild.. they should be all about the money. They should only help other members of the guild.

i agree

Yeah, for the Dark Brotherhood I want to be a Jason Bourne Assassin, not a sanctioned, sociopathic, serial killer.

Maybe that Satanist angle could be used for a Necromancer's Guild.

What was especially cool was the conflict between Morag Tong and Dark Brotherhood in Morrowind (even if it never really happened anything, it was an underlying story...).
Sadly Morag Tong is restricted to only a few parts of Tamriel. I'm not sure which exactly, but I do hope they'll be in Skyrim

Love playing stealth characters. I've always thought, why does the DB, MT or TG have to fit into one stereotype or another? If I'm running the TG, I'm going to have Thieves, Rogues, Smugglers etc. There are different roles for different types. I liked some of the variety in MW with the TG and hope that comes back a bit. I did enjoy the quest lines in Oblivion. First time I went into the lighthouse, was pretty intense. But I'd like to see some more variety...you could do some robin hood, but perhaps you could smuggle some high priced art out of an estate, bring it back and have it be sold to a fence...in exchange for a small trinket or gold. I thought it was cool to explore the sewers and try to break into places at night. They could have incorporated that into the TG quest line, IMHO. I'm hopeful there is some guild conflict with the DB. The guild conflict we had in MW was far superior to anything we had in Oblivion. Would really open up the possibility of assassinating high value targets or strategic supporters.

Exactly, the Dark Brotherhood was just that, a brotherhood. And as for the thieves guild, they either should make it completely robin hood, or just a guild o thieves- preferably the second one. Oblivion kinda rode the fence on that one, it kinda took the enjoyment out of it

Make the Dark Brotherhood, more or less, like the Daggerfall chapter and less "I SPILL BLUUD FOR SITHISSS!!!", and have the Thieves Guild more like the Daggerfall and Morrowind chapter (save for the Robin Hood quests towards the end).

The real question is; should the Dark Brotherhood once again return to the freakishly proportioned, hooded dancing girls within every sanctuary? Because it's not like there wouldn't be 50 13-year-old boys peering in the windows all day if that happened.

What was the DB like in Daggerfall?

Killers who took contracts from anyone and everyone, failure is never an option, betrayal will get you killed, and freelance assassins, along with their employers, were killed. To get an idea, just read the quest accept, decline, fail, or succeed dialog in UESP.

Sounds good.

Also, all this Sithis thing made it a bit cheesy in my opinion. Sithis isn't a bad idea, it just needs to be... done in a different way.

I was pretty satisfied with the way Oblivion's Thieves Guild was put together, but I think in Skyrim it should play a more prominent and sinister role, since a civil war is a perfect scenario for a formerly suppressed Thieves Guild to rise from the shadows (figuratively, not literally of course ).

I'm sick of being in a "Thieves Guild." I want to be part of a real criminal organization, not some nonsensical group that allows you to hawk stolen goods or things for the guild for...some reason. Something that specializes in smuggling, blackmail, "protection," and is not afraid to bloody its hands. Something that's...built from the ground up to make a profit from...legally ambiguous methods. And which is as dangerous and cutthroat as you'd expect, where you're just another scrub among thousands, competition for the lower-ranking, and expendable to the higher-ups.

I can't quite remember all the quests from Morrowind, but unless I'm completely mistaken, they were a pretty badass gang of mobsters there. Only Gentleman Jim Stacey and his Bal Molagmer quests were really Robin Hood style, and you can even choose not to do them if you're not that kind of guy (I specifically remember Jim telling me something like that). Before that, you did actually execute freelancers, you did hire muscle for your base of operations, and you did fight over territory with another criminal organization.
I think you're thinking of the quests involving the Cammona Tong as Robin Hood style. But they only seem like that because the Cammona Tong are racist and not very likable. Other than that, they're no different than the Thieves Guild, and the whole thing is really nothing more but a war on territory.

Anyway. What I didn't like about Oblivion's questline was that it was too personal. The Thieves Guild were simply the lackeys of the Gray Fox, and they were as loyal as any knightly order could have been to their king. But the Gray Fox, he was noone who was worth fighting for. He didn't have a masterplan for the guild. In the end, not only didn't he have a masterplan for the guild, his only masterplan was actually to leave the guild. The Thieves Guild was portrayed as if all they were looking for was the next cool heist, when it should really have been important what comes out of the heist - a whole lot of money, for instance.
At some point, I just really wanted to start a rebellion.
What they should have done was to set it up like the Barksdale organization in The Wire... have the Gray Fox as that mystical man that everyone's longing to get a look at, while Armand Christophe actually seems to be in charge, and is handling the "business". Yes, that should have involved drugs too. There should have been a lot more mistrust, tension, struggle for power. And at the end, when it turns out that the Gray Fox's "big plan" was to steal a bunch of things that have absolutely no street value, completely for his personal gain of being able to get his identity back (while also endangering the Guild with these high-profile heists)... the Guild should have gotten rid of him, and set up a new order.

There are a lot of concepts I can understand in the Thieves Guild in Oblivion. For example, the "no murders" policy. It makes sense because of business reasons. We never hear those, sadly. It would have been so much more awesome if Armande Christophe had lectured us in how murders cost bribe money, and stuff like that. (Seriously guys, watch The Wire to see what I'm talking about here, all the Stringer Bell dialogues are basically how it should have been..)

Seriously.

Too Satanic? You mean too dark worshipping.

I didn't see the Dark Brotherhood as a bunch of back stabbers and evil-doers. In fact, I saw them as a devoted cult toward a common goal. Sure, their resolve was carried out via murder, but the members have a very strict hierarchy. They are respectful, organized, and methodical.

Which reminds me of a question in the back of my mind:
Will there be sneak kills? As in backstabs and neck slashes. I think it would be awesome to enhance the stealth path of the game.

I would like to see the end to the whole kleptomania attitude and more a tightly focused outlook on planning and executing burglaries. So higher repercussions caught stealing and violent/angry responses from NPCs who find out you are tresspassing in their house and better dialogue and investigation into NPCs routines etc.

Also burglaries really need to be more on the lines of “I'll take the items which are valuable and easy to carry” rather than “Okay carrying more than my weight in items here still only 216 gold might as well take the clothes and also the plate with the cheese on it etc”

Weight needs to be seriously addressed here as no thief ever carries away the entire contents of a house with him. So focus on making certain items valuable and make it impossible to fence mundane generic items and end to having useless containers put in houses with items which can't be used by the player or the NPCs so each item has a use by the NPC and in turn stealing that item will affect the NPC.

I choose you, Anarchy!

Nah, just kidding.

Seriously, Thieves Guild was waaaaayyyyy too much Robin Hood.
Take from the rich, give to the poor. Yeah, Like the poor can't do anything but ask for coins.

I hope the Penitus Oculatus is in skyrim as an alternate assassin guild to join.

Pretty much this.

The Thieves Guild are supposed to be the ones who control anything crime-related. Drug/weapon smuggling, prostitution and "protecting" stores in exchange for gold.. They need a much darker atmosphere than Oblivion and Morrowind to an extent.
And yes, they need to send agents to dispose of freelance thieves. Because those freelancers ruin their economy and business.

I"d love to see nobles and other guilds using the Thieves Guild for favors.

I just want more bread and butter type quests. Not epic story based stuff until much farther up the ranks.

Well, in either one of these guilds, I'd like to see rivals dealt with. I'd kinda like to see something a bit more Mafia for the Theives guild. At least for the higher up quests. Maybe you could also do other things for cash -- like selling drugs (skooma, moonsugar, etc.

I think as far as the DB goes -- I liked Sithis, but I wish it was a bit more of the human sacrifice bit -- something like the ritual sacrifice of the Mithic Dawn. Kidnap the bloke and kill him for Sithis on an altar or some such. Besides which I want people to be genuinely afraid of the DB guild.

Yeah... I can't vote because of the amount of bias in the poll.

My problem with Oblivion's Thieve's Guild quests were that it was too linear in its quests, as opposed to Morrowind's. On the other hand, the Oblivion thieve's guilt tried to pass itself off as a more self-directed thing. Unfortunately, they didn't have rank be based off the value of fenced goods, nor give any real bonuses for higher ranks. I do like the idea of the thieves guild, as a general rule, having a sense of Camadarie. The lack of a Thieve's Guild Hideout in Oblivion bothered me a lot (Morrowind had the corner clubs!). I've never seen them as an evil guild. The reason they look out for beggars is because, as previously noted, beggars are good sources of information (Read The Beggar Prince), and they don't have anything worth stealing anyway.

Shutting down freelance thieves, running protection rackets, and gang warfare should make a return, though. Higher ranks in all guilds should give access to better services, and options for shaping the running of the guild to a degree. So, if you become Master Thief, you can choose to turn the Guild into a ruthless band of urban brigands, take it down a Robin-Hood style path (As Corvus Umbranox did), or anything in between the extremes. It should also always offer choices from multiple quests and decline quests you disagree with, so someone playing a Robin-Hood thief doesn't have to do "dirty business." It could also be possible to have someone who's not into the "Dirty business" to have advancement stinted, but still able to recieve contract heists and help out guild-members-in-trouble.

The thieve's guild is two things, but first and foremost a safe place for thieves and rogues (And assassins who are quiet about their involvment in that profession) to hang out, exchange services and information (Especially now that alchemy's a Stealth skill, it should be possible to have discussions about the field applications of alchemy), and essentially give a sense of camadarie and security for those on the wrong side of the law. They have rules, such as don't rob anyone under the protection racket (Which included Beggars in Oblivion, though they paid with information instead of coin, and got change back), because that would cause the scheme to blow up, and don't rob from each other: There are plenty of other targets out there, they don't need to be fighting amongst themselves. Murder is also out, because they're thieves, not murderers, and would rather not have to go through the trouble of keeping such members' records clear, in addition to offending the sensibilities of a large number of the guild members.

The business side of things is to keep the primary function running, with most of the revenue invested in keeping the guild's records clear. They are against freelance theives because they ruin protection rackets, and raise crime rates high enough to increase the guild's operational costs as the guards become less tolerant of all criminal scum.

I don't play evil murderers (There are too few NPCs in Oblivion), so I don't care about the Dark Brotherhood too much, but I'd like the ability to play a DB member that prefers to think of himself somewhat like The Punisher for hire, instead of a Stab-happy murderer. Even if morals do get in the way of promotion (And halting eventually), you should still be able to recieve "Justified" contracts, even if you don't get past a certain low rank in the guild.