Hi there everyone,

at first I'd like to say that I'm really enjoying skyrim so far. The graphics are nice, the combat is good (not to hard, but not that easy either), the huge living world feels...well..alive and so far I didn't have any major bugs or glitches apart from some clipping errors.

But there is one thing that really bugs me and it's also one that really bugged me in oblivion. You steal a horse, no one spots you stealing the horse, you ride thousands of miles away, enter a town or village, everyone is really nice and says "hello" and stuff, you jump of the horse, jump back on and everyone is like "THIIIIIIIIIIIEF". That is stupid. It totally ruins the fun for me, because I want to play a thief-like character. Of course from a developing standpoint it makes sense. The horse is still flagged as "not mine" and therefore everyone who sees me taking it, thinks I'm stealing it. But from a logical standpoint it's totally sensless. They see me riding that freaking horse and they don't care, but when I hop off and on again they suddendly think I'm stealing. How the hell do they know that it's not my horse, if I stole it thousands of miles away.

For gods sake, please change that.

Also another thing about that problem. When I try to steal a horse, why do npc's who are 200-300 meter away from me, while facing the other direction (there back faces my direction), are able to spot me stealing it. There is no one else. Just one person that is 200-300 meter away and he is looking in another direction. Why can he see me steal the horse?

This is something that (in my opinion) kinda ruins the thievery gameplay a bit.

NOOOOOOOOO.... Not this again... What's the point of enhancing the stealth aspect when the AI is still this flawed ... aargh

i have to agree with you here. Not much sense in it being that way, however i do see the problem the other way around as well.

since you have a stolen horse it is flagged as stolen. If they should not attack you this flag has to be removed, so how do one manage that? because if you remove the flag, your also saying the one you stole the horse from wouldnt recognice it as stolen anymore.
one way to solve it i guess would hvae the original owner hostile to you kinda in a way the guards are if you steal something and youre seen, but not caught right away.

....Ihope it is.

I don't know, maybe with an invisible attribute that contains owner and origin-location. And if origin-location not equal to the location you are in right now, no hostility if you take it. Something like that. Not everything has to be solved by flags.

How do people even know it's not your horse when you originally steal it? I could see this being an issue when the actual owner is nearby or you're in a smaller village where people know each other well enough to recognize their horses but otherwise ... do the horses have their owners tattood on their butts like my little pony?

Horses are branded like cattle.