I'm gonna start a new game since I got and completed Dawenguard today, and wanna play through it again so I can
The problem is that, for Skyrim I like to play a good character, as playing a bad character isn't really feasible as almost all your quests outside of the DB questline are "Hero of the day!" type quests. This would mean that he'd wipe out the Dark Brotherhood, which you can do, but he'd also want to purge Riften of the Thieves Guild, which you are never given the option of doing, and you are even forced to do the first quest in the Thieves Guild questline if you don't have really high speech and the persuasion perk.

Bethesda really needs to add the option to drive/wipe out the Thieves Guild, rather than forcing characters to start the questline. Or, at the very least, allow players to complete the Thieves Guild questline without becoming Nightingales, even if that means sacrificing the Guild Master rank (Delvin could take your place as the thiurd Nightingale and Brynjolf could end up leading against his will).

Am I the only one that feels this way about the Thieves Guild faction & questline, and is there any way to get Bethesda to finally pay attention to this issue?

I expect they're paying attention, since there are a lot of players who are not comfortable with the whole Nightingales thing. However, I don't know if they'll be able to do anything about it, what with the game being released already. Maybe they'll learn from their mistake in Elder Scrolls VI.

i agree with you, but you don't need any speech skill to pass the thieves guild part. i refused to join them on my first character and just asked around.... and what happens? yes, the innkeeper tells me where beirand is.

YOU WERE THE DRAGONBORN!

IT WAS SAID YOU WOULD DESTROY THE THIEVES NOT JOIN THEM! Bring balance to the Rift! Not leave it in Darkness!

Sorry I had to, I watched Star Wars episode 3 last night and this popped into my head when I saw the title of the topic xD.

ON TOPIC. Yes I think it should be possible to do this as it caters to both evil and good playthroughs instead of favouring one as it currently does.

Perhaps, but it is an easy fix. Refuse to join the Nightingales, your decision annoys Brynjolf and Karliah, who insist it is the only way to take down Mercer, you disagree and the three of you leave, you then get an updated quest marker saying you've decided to prove them wrong by going after Mercer yourself (But you can take a follower if you wish, of course). Then, when you get back, Brynjolf, Karliah and Delvin are all Nightingales, and you're now looked upon as a total badass for taking down an agent of Nocturnal, and Brynjolf, now the Guild Master, offers you the leadership role, which you can choose to refuse if you wish.

If it was done like that, there'd need to be maybe one or two new lines of dialogue and the rest can all be the same.

I think that there are several ways that the Thieves' Guild quest should be revamped.

1. It should be OPTIONAL. You should be able to politely (or rudely) decline Brynelf's offer, and he returns to the Ratway. If you change your mind, you can go down there.
2. It should be skill-based. Brynelf won't contact you or even let you join until one or more of your Thief-related skills (Sneak, Pickpocket, and/or Lockpick) have reached reach a certain level (35 sounds about right). This should be true of the Companions and Mage's College as well.
3. It should be reversible. You should be able to rat the Guild out. Or wipe them out yourself.
4. It should not penalize the player by permanantly costing them a useful general Goods merchant (Riften is the only town around with two). Tiberius, who never started the TG quest, loves having Brand-Shei around to buy his stuff. If the player initiates the questline, 7 days should pass and then Brand-Shei returns to his stand.
5. The Nightingales aspect should have been either deleted or made optional and added to the Daedric quests.

1) Agreed.
2) Make it 50, 35 isn't too hard to get to tbh, and make it all thief related skills, not just one (They're supposed to be professionals, after all).
3) Definitely agreed.
4) He's supposed to, but he's bugged, grab the unofficial skyrim patch on nexus to fix it if you play on pc.
5) The whole Daedric thing is why I have a problem with it, my character would never deal with any Daedra, and he sure as hell wouldn't sell his soul to one.

You don't have to talk to Brynjolf at all to advance the MQ, you don't need his permission to go down there. I've gone to Riften for the MQ and gone straight in and walked through the Flagon and out the other side with no problems, if you don't cause any trouble they don't care. Heck I even stopped and got sneak training from Delvin on one character without ever having met him before or started any of the TG stuff (which I admit, I was shocked when the option came up, maybe it was a bug, but there it was).

I will admit though that if you go to Riften AT ALL, Brynjolf is extremely hard to avoid. You can't go anywhere in the marketplace while he's out there, or enter the pub when he's in it, without him running over and hijacking whatever business you're trying to conduct with his scripted spiel. And there doesn't seem to be a way to tell him to just piss off and leave you alone - I've tried different dialogue options and it always seems to end up with an objective to talk to him about his "scheme" because he won't take no for an answer. And that to me is extremely irritating.

Really the whole thing could be fixed by a simple mechanism that would allow a player to "refuse" quests somehow, and then remove the objectives from the journal or drop them down in the inactive list. Make an option to reactivate them again for those people who change their minds 20 levels later, fine, but don't stick me with a bunch of crap in my active journal that I am never, ever, EVER gonna complete no matter how long I play that character.