In Oblivion, stolen goods were magically known to all npc's as stolen, and thus persona non grata for all but the few fences in the game.

Imo, this was an at best discouraging, and at worst infuriating, game mechanic. Here's why:

-Basically forced you to join the thieves guild if you wanted to sell stolen goods, thus removing choice, and choice is what really defines a rpg.

-Doesn't really makes sense, breaking immersion. A apple is somehow identifiable as stolen? Denied! Now let me sell some imperial guard's armor who I killed, and obviously is either stolen or the result of murder. Sell approved! o.O

-Inconvenient. I like to frequent the same shop out of habit and to build up that npc's disposition to get better prices...having to find a fence was just irritating.

The grand result was that I eventually stopped stealing altogether, because it wasn't worth the effort. I rarely vote for features to be taken out of the game, rather than added, but please axe this feature bethesda.

Thoughts?

I agree that it shouldn't be automatic, but if you steal unique items it'd should still raise a flag, especially if you continue to sell stuff to the same merchant.

"Oh Stendarr...my neighbor was robbed again last night. Better be sure to lockup. And oh look! My favorite customer, dressed as always in his stylish dark clothes and hood, has another Rare Diamond Necklace for me! And so cheap!'

That's really why a fence is useful. If shady characters continue to sell jewelry, weapons, fancy clothes, silver dinner ware, someone will catch on eventually. You could just go to different merchants, but why not use a fence?

I blame Oblivion for changing my play style. One of the first things I did in Morrowind each time I started a game was go to Balmora and join the thieves guild. Stealing was a kind of funny hobby for me, thanks to the stupidity of the NPCs.

When Oblivion came out, I started consistently making combat oriented characters, and I haven't turned back since. Stealth-oriented characters was almost a requirement for me, now I just gots to smash.

Maybe if they retooled it. Perhaps a shopkeep would recognize their own goods, thus forcing you to sell to someone else. And as the thieves guild doesn't like freelancers, maybe once you've done some freelance thievery, you'll be approached by a member and be told to either stop stealing stuff, or join the thieves guild. If you refuse, you might have a problem on your hands. Guards could be tipped off. Assassination contracts could be made. You name it.

This way, the anti-thievery selling mechanics turn into a game enriching mechanic, instead of one that discourages stealing. It could be fun to play as a rogue thief, operating outside of the guild, hunted at every corner.

My idea:
selling back to the owner - instant no-no, guard alerted
selling to other merchants on the same day - treated as normal goods
selling to other merchants after a few days have passed - treated as stolen goods, price lowered

Well I don't think we should simply be able to steal something and then sell it, especially if it's as easy to steal as it was in Oblivion. It would break the economy in my opinion. There needs to be some challenge inherent in profiting from your theft (or thieving needs to be MUCH more challenging so that what you manage to steal and profit from, you've had to work very, very hard to earn.)

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1158283-thieves-guild-stolen-items/page__p__16978657__hl__stolen+items+and+thieves+guild__fromsearch__1#entry16978657

There is a few good suggestions, including my own.

Break the economy? In Oblivion, A lot more money could be made quicker, with less effort, and whilst upping your combat skills no less, out in the wilderness. I agree that the anti-thieving ai should be better, because that would make thievery more interesting, instead of more frustrating like the stolen goods system did.

Okay- first off I agree on the "psychic stolen goods detection."

Now, with that out of the way- I've really had it up to my eyebrows with the claptrap bolded in the quote above, as it's a half-truth...a lie through incomplete statement...a falsehood via omission. Choice and consequences, people!! The two go hand in hand like up and down, heads and tails, in and out, chocolate and peanut butter.

Consequence of wanting to sell stolen goods = your character having to find someone who buys stolen goods. Which might mean having to join the only guild that provides such services. Or, if for whatever RP reasons your character won't join the only guild that will buy stolen goods, maybe they shouldn't be selling stolen goods anyway in which case- they're stolen, not undroppable quest items, so...they actually can be disposed of. Drop'em anywhere. Deliberately throw'em into a known-to-respawn container. (Personal favorite for getting rid of things there)

In games that we kill and loot a lot of opponents, good loot should be scarce, and only some bosses and higher level monsters should drop good quality loot.

On the other hand, stealing should result in average income related to the looting, with a chance of finding better items, in high class houses, but not much, and the more guarded the place the better loot should be found, or vice versa.

As for the "Stolen" mark on the items, I would suggest this:


Plus this:

Only the owner should realize it's nicked. If it's extremely valuable and you're a bum it should be suspicious to guards. If it's a unique item you couldn't have in any way more people in town should recognize. The farther away you go from the place where you nicked, the less the chance people have questions about your kit. Also, independently from the place, the suspicion level of a nicked item should drop over time. If you pick up something to look at it, you should be able to put it down. There should be a good chance no one cares if you're doing a runner while in possession of a nicked pewter spoon. Taadaa. I think I've covered all possible cases.

NINJAAAAAAS!!!!!!

In Morrowind, if you stole something from a merchant, and tried to sell the item back, that merchant would know it was stolen, other merchants, however, wouldn't know or wouldn't care. This made more sense than all merchants except fences refusing to buy any stolen item, but Morrowind's implementation had its own problem, namely, the game flagged all instances of that item, not the specific item you stole, thus, if you stole a sheet of paper from a merchant at some point, every sheet of paper you try to sell to that person would be recognized as stolen. This might make a bit of sense if it was some rare item as if you noticed that your Daedric dagger was stolen, than someone came and tried to sell you an identicle dagger shortly afterwards, you'd probably be suspicious too, but it started to get pretty silly when NPCs would assume that a piece of hound meat is the same one as the one stolen from them two in-game weeks ago, not to mention it was inconvenient for thieves as one had to be careful not to EVER sell items of the same type you once stole from an NPC to the same person. But that, I think, was mostly a problem with the engine and was obviously fixed in Oblivion, as shown by the fact that if I steal a silver bowl, only that silver bowl gets the red hand flag, not others.

Hopefully, Skyrim won't go with the same approach as Oblivion in this regard, I don't want a strawberry I stolen in one town to be recognized as stolen in a town on the other side of the map, either go back to Morrowind's approach, or come up with something better.

Well now...Imo that's a tad of a overreaction. How much of a game is an rpg hinges on the potential for choice. How good it is at being an rpg is how much depth those choices have, as in consequences. As you said, the two go hand in hand...so i didn't think it necessary to state the latter.

As for the consequences for stealing, isnt that supposed to be handled via the law enforcement system? At the very least, by a karma system. You seem to imply that being forced to join the thieves guild to sell stolen goods is a justifiable consequence, but I have to disagree. Earlier in this topic a poster even said he changed his playstyle after being faced with that system.

Here's what I would suggest as for consequences for stealing:
-Being caught in the act.
-Instead of not being able to sell stolen goods at all, have selling them have a risk of being found out and reported to the guards.

Selling to other merchants after a month - treated as normal goods.

gotta be careful here. Whenever you implement a "risk" factor in the game, you'll run into players abusing it by saving and reloading. It is a good idea to make it a risk to sell the stolen goods, but you probably have to determine the risk of being caught the moment you steal the goods, not the moment you sell the goods. For example, "getCaught" is a variable that's either 1 or 0. The moment the goods is stolen, getCaught is set to either 1 or 0 and cannot be changed (unless there's some mechanism that lets you "clean" the stolen goods). So when the user sells it he probably won't want to bother reloading to the point before stealing it, thus preventing abuse. On the other hand however, this approach limits the factors you can use to determine the value of getCaught variable. For example, you cannot use the users skill level, because they change over time.

I don't see how it's not a justifiable consequence- if the Thieves' Guild has a monopoly on fencing stolen goods (Which they do under the devs' design of the game- which is to say, "The gods who created the land have decreed it to be so!") then you deal with them, or don't sell stolen goods since nobody else will buy them. :shrug: It don't get much simpler.

See, this is a good example of why I'm fed up with all the hullabaloo about "choices" while ignoring that some might :gasp: actually have consequences as well. That mentality seems to segue into the belief that somehow the developers owe people the right to dictate what can be done in the game (which amounts to pretty much everything) in defiance of the simple reality: Games are made to make money, and for the devs to express themselves- and about the only rights you or I have in that equation are "To buy, or not to buy." Well...and to suggest over and over and over and then gripe when the "gods who created the land" do it the way they want it done in spite of our expert advice.

No resale to the merchant you stole from, generally more difficult thievery, and a chance of being reported by other merchants in the same town depending on uniqueness of item stolen, sounds good to me.

It doesn't make any sense that people can detect common stolen items. If you steal rare valuable items though i think this should still be applied. If you manage to break in a castle and steal some rare gems (if there are any :s) then not anyone would buy it off you. You'll need to sell it to a fence.

Personally I didn't mind it. If you steal you're a thief, if you're a thief I'm pretty sure you could join the thieves guild. You're a thief afterall.

But allowing characters to sell misc items of little value or common ingredients is fine IMO. If you want to sell more valuable stuff then you'll need a fence.


Just as a FYI: Fo3/NV requires you to go to another vendor/town to sell stolen goods.

Morrowind system was totally broken as in borderline gamebreaking. If you once stole an diamond from a merchant he would accuse you for theft if you later sold him any diamonds.
It works this way as most items are just copies of base or template items, so changing properties of one item change all.

One solution might be to keep the owner id on item not only a stolen flag who is on the individual item not the template, this way you could id the merchant, so you could sell to other, might even add restriction on do not sell expensive items in the same city, or simply make it dangerous. The only downside of this that the stolen items from somebody will stack separately. You have a stack with 12 apples you find or buy another with 4 you stole from Ongar and 2 from Brigitte, because of this it might smart to show a stolen marker to tell you to be careful.

Stealing everything that isn't nailed down to the floor was what I did on my first playthrough in Morrowind. :wink_smile:

First of all, nice name.
Second, yes.

Since when did they neccesarily have a monopoly? Since when were there no other fences in the world besides in a guild? It's ridiculous that there's no independant fences. And when you steal something, it shouldn't automatically be known as stolen.

Goods should not be marked as stolen, ever. Unless you steal a unique family heirloom and then try to sell it to the guy who owns it. You could of course have a chance for merchants to get the picture if you sell them the exact goods that went missing 2 minutes earlier of course, but in general I agree with the OP, that feature was annoying.

Yes. The whole system needs a revamp. Both Morrowind's and Oblivion's system were both equally broken. I enjoy Morrowind's more but it was still broken.

I would love a more common sense based system in place. No item will ever be clearly marked as "stolen" Every item you take that you do not buy should be considered stealing(from a shopkeeper or a bandit doesn't matter) Where it differs from the previous systems is the consequences for "stealing" If you steal from a shopkeeper, he will obviously go call the guards. If you steal that Nord's prized family shield, he will probably attack you(maybe with fists, maybe with a weapon) If you steal from a man in a town with no guards, he will likely just let you have it if he's weak, or he may attack you. And finally if you steal from a non-hostile bandit or skooma lord he will probably attack you.

So basically, nothing should be marked whether you can take it or not and should be common sense: "If it's not yours don't take it or suffer consequences" Everything should be considered "stealing" but the consequences vary by who you stole from or who saw you steal.

All items should have a "hot" value to them. Some stolen items should be easy to sell, while others if they're a family shield would be nearly impossible to sell. The town the item was stolen from should also play a role in who I can sell the item to. If I steal a ring from a well-known woman in Whiterun, I may not be able to find a buyer in Whiterun itself, but if I go to another town I can probably get rid of it. Maybe these "hot" items could only be sold to a pawnbroker who doesn't care where the item comes from. A smithy on the other hand will likely want to steer clear of suspicious items.

Another point is that just because you pick up an item does not make it stealing. The owner should ask you to pay for the item or put it down. If you walk out with the item, the npc will go tell a guard(the npc would physically have to go talk to a guard, no psychicness)

Those are a few of the thoughts I had. It more resembles Morrowind's system but isn't quite as broken and it's not as annoying as Oblivion's system. The reason I'd want items to not be marked "stolen" is because in almost every save game I make I make a home museum. There are often certain items I have to get dishonestly and get annoyed by seeing the red hand marking an item I stole. It's permanently mine now! No need for the marker. Another reason is because it would be more immersive, you'd have to be careful and you'd have to remember which items were stolen from where.

i agree that common stuff should not be marked as stolen and you should be able to sell it to anybody but the person you stole it from (cuz they would know theyre missing it) and i kinda like the idea that if you steal it you have to sell it within say 6 hours to sell something of decent value in the same city or youd have to wait a few days for the news to die down. and if it is a rare object you need to go to a fence.