If you were insulted, maybe you are taking things a bit too seriously. I took that part as hyperbole. I think what he is really saying is that there is "no excuse for not trying no HUD play."

I would like to see a video of someone dropping a hawk without HUD within, say, 100 shots?

You're missing the point. If you can't actually see how much stamina you have left, how do you when to conserve? If you don't actually see how much health you have, when would you take a risky power attack that might leave you open for a hit? Not being able to see health and stamina removes a lot of "strategy," if you can even call it that. Your "terrain" argument is totally irrelevant, we're talking about HUDs.



You're full of it. Number of times hit? Seriously? So when those Falmer insect-pets stack some poison on me, I'm just... what exactly? Calculating this in my head? Give me a break.

Not sure why you find this so much harder to believe than all those folks on this forum claiming to play DID on Master and getting their character up to high levels. I doubt I would get past level 5 playing DID on Master HUD or no HUD, but I have shot a hawk in flight down several times with firebolts playing no HUD. Took an average of ten maybe fifteen shots. You can see where your last firebolt flew past the hawk and adjust your aim accordingly. It would be admittingly harder with a bow since it is harder to see your arrows in flight and they have a more arcing flight path than a firebolt. The only time I took a hawk out with a bow no HUD was when it had landed in a tree. But my hand/eye coordination is not that good, so I would not be surprised if others could do it without much trouble.

Turija is right, the OP used a lot of hyperbole in his post to encourage other users to do as he did. A little internet 101: it's called "trolling" and if you're bothered by it, that's your fault.

See http://www.google.com/search?rls=en&q=rules+of+the+internet

This coming from a guy who is continuously hitting himself in the head?

That's the risk, you don't know anything, so you have to think before you act.

Best way I can put it is when I played Batman Arkham City, I loved the game, but it always told you when people were going to attack and thus made it easy for me to get through combat. However when I unlocked hardcoe mode with did away with attack indicators, the game felt totally new to me because I had to rely more on visual indications and my own mind to assess the battle to know whether or not I was going to win, and thus I enjoyed the game tenfold because of that.

Also I asked about terrain advantage because you made it sound as if the game has no tactics what so ever, when it does. Just because I can't be mindless in a fight, doesn't make it any less tactical. What you are talking about is the ability to be mindless while you depend heavily on on screen indicators to tell you whether or not you are wining. Which has nothing to do with how you approach a fight, or handle a fight once you have engaged in it.

Congratulations you enjoy playing without having a clue what your stats are or how to properly aim at anything outside of using the bow. It's good you have figured out the exact spot on your screen to place over boxes to open them seeing as your hands never get near the object so you can see what you are supposed to be touching. I'm very proud of you for having the patience to accomplish this amazing feat.

Now stop trying to force other people to do it your way and we won't try to convince you to turn your hud back on. Fair enough?

HUD....

Some may call this junk, me... i call them treasures...

Sorry, it is just a game to me, every elements help playing the game without spending extra time is welcome to me.

Oh, but Honor to you

The point is that it makes you consider every attack as possibly lethal, which if you think about it is how you would approach things if you were in real life combat, so it is more immersive.

Also, for anyone playing on a console, the choice is HUD or no HUD. There is no middle ground, since you cannot turn off the compass or compass icons or sneak crosshair on a console. Granted, if I could turn off everything but the health/magicka/stamina bars I would gladly keep those on, but I cannot and the benefit of getting rid of compass and sneak crosshairs outweighs any annoyance of loosing the health/magicka/stamina bars.

Think about what? You start the fight with 100% health and 100% stamina. Halfway through the fight you have... what? How much health? You have no idea. You try to power attack and can't... well, I guess we no we're out of stamina. Should I drink a health potion? I have no idea!


Skyrim doesn't have visual indicators. As to your own mind... again, I call BS. You're not calculating damage received on Master difficulty based on a bandit hitting you with a dagger-- let alone multiple enemies.


There's essentially one strategic thing you can do in Skyrim: use a shield. You can block attacks and interrupt a power attack. That's it. "Using the terrain..." the only thing you can do here is line-of-sight around a tree, boulder, etc. against a ranged enemy. That's not very deep strategy. I've had a million debates about Skyrim's combat system against the fan boiz who see things that aren't there. The combat system is bland at best. It's not tactical and it's not strategic-- the game's great but don't make it up to be something it's not.



To each his own. I don't think that pretending every hit is going to 1-shot me somehow immerses me more deeply than an actual strategic combat system.

If you are paying attention, you will know you that you have been hit by a good dose of Charus poison. Then it is time to heal. Simple as that. Of course you will never know exactly how many health points you have left, but you can have a good guess as to whether you are above fifty percent or not, and that is all you really need to know.

Who cares if you waste a few healing potions now and again?

As far as stamina goes, I do not have the hand/eye coordination to hit anything with a power attack on a reliable basis, so I only use stamina for sprinting and occassionally for zooming with an arrow. Plus I have the respite perk so stamina is not an issue.

If you never get hit then you know what your health is at. Also your character does have audio clues as to when he is out of stamina, not to mention that you would be unable to bash or do power attacks which are a big indicator as well.



You're right, and I never said it did.



When I go into a fight against a bandit, and I know its just a bandit I hack and slash without fear of being hit becuase I know that he won't harm me and I can just take his abuse without worry. If I go into the fight not knowing whether or not what I am fighting is a bandit, or a bandit plunderer, then I dodge, block, dash around, use doorways, hallways (hallways and doorways are wonderful tools when fighting packs of bad guys because it forces them to come through 1 at a time), height advantages and anything else I can in a fight. Not knowing what the enemy is puts more fear into me and makes me think a little bit more before I attack.


I'm not trying to change your mind or force you to play as I do. But there are tactics there, and there are ways of playing with no HUD without getting pwned all the time

So chugging potions totally at random, sounds pretty strategic. Your personal use of stamina is totally irrelevant for this discussion, we're talking about the majority of players.

We still haven't touched on another very important HUD element-- magicka. Please explain how not knowing how much magic you have is strategic, as to when you should cast a heal as opposed to an offensive spell.

Weakest argument in this entire thread. I'm not even going to touch this one.


You can generally tell what type of bandit it is based on their armor type. Also, if you play on Master, you're not going to run in and hack and slash much of anything until you're decently geared. Please explain "dodge," because I haven't seen a dodge yet unless you're talking about A: The slow-motion perk in block or B: A random run-away sprint at a lucky time while an enemy is power attacking. So basically we're saying that the strategy is running away from groups of enemies to force them into a hallway (which is a good tactic, I'll give you that, but it also shows the horrible AI as they stand in a line and wait to die). "Height advantages" means that an enemy can't get to you so you just shoot arrows at it from a distance, again displaying terrible AI and not adding anything strategic.

I guess we'll agree to disagree.

Now it is you who are full of it. First of all using a shield is tactical, not strategic. There are plenty of tactical things you can do beyond mere shield use. You can flank a bear, for instance, to avoid the brunt of his attacks. And trees and rock outcrops and narrow places all create tactical advantages against melee opponents, not just ranged combat.

If you want to talk strategy, suppose you are walking down a road that has a small 10-15 foot tall bluff on each side, you decide to scale the bluff and follow it instead of just walking up the road because you will be penned in if you meet anyone coming up the road if you take the low ground, but from the bluff, you will be able to shoot arrows down on them as they try to scale the bluff and you will have more options for retreat. That is an example of taking strategic advantage of terrain.

I'd agree with you whole-heartedly, except that in real life, you can (usually) tell how badly you're hurting. Or how tired you are from running.
In the (hypothetical) case of magicka, you'd likely feel the strain, and know when you would be able to muster up enough will to cast the next spell. Ingame, this turns into a guessing-game click-fest (You do not have enough magicka. You do not have enough magicka. You do not have enough-)

Not having a health meter, specifically, proved far too much for me. Playing on a mage is a nightmare without being able to tell how high (or more often, low) their health is. An arrow, for instance - it could have dealt anywhere from negligible damage to well over half health in damage. The raspberry jelly on screen doesn't tell me which. So either my mage could die in the next shot, or, perhaps, waste limited magicka reserves healing life that isn't even gone (followed by strafing around until enough magicka is back to cast offensive spells - meanwhile being spammed with the Not Enough Magicka messages).

So while it sounded good on paper, it became extremely frustrating (for myself) in practice.

How is it a weak argument? I've cleared entire dungeons without ever once taking damage and this was while I was using a HUD and was willing to be more risky in combat because I knew my situation in the battle.


I've done a lot of hacking and slashing on master vs bandits at a low level with cheap gear. They are relatively weak mobs (compared to others) since they are one of the first you encounter. It's the outlaws and highwaymen I always found to be trouble as a low level.


Using your directional keys to get out of the way = dodging. My character a 2hd barbarian in leather armor moves around quite a bit, and quite quickly. Power attacks are ALWAYS choreographed and therefor easy to dodge by simply just stepping out of the way. Tell me this, you ever try power attacking a NPC who just stepped out of your way while your attacked missed? You too can do the same to NPC's.



I guess if you want to see it as a flaw then you will. It only makes sense that enemies will have to use a doorway 1 at a time, and only makes sense that in a small hallway they wouldn't be able to surround you on all sides.


It is well know that a archer on higher ground has an advantage over an opponent on lower ground. Whether or not Bethesda actually coded this into the game I don't know, but I have found it way easier to have a archery fight with an enemy when I had the higher ground. I also find that I get hurt a lot fighting an archer who has the height advantage on me. Sure you could LOS your enemies, but being that I've only used height advantage in archery fights I was still at risk of dying.



I guess we will

Dude you are getting way sidetracked here. The point of no HUD play is turning off the sneak crosshair and compass and other screen clutter. The fact that you loose health/magicka/stamina bars is just part of the deal, since there is no way to turn off the sneak crosshair and compass without loosing the health/magicka/stamina bars if you play on a console.

Sure, if you are on a PC where you can leave on the health/magicka/stamina bars and turn everything else off, then go for it. I would do that if I could on my PS3, but I can't. And the benefit of no compass and no sneak crosshairs in terms of immersion outweighs any annoyance of not knowing precisely what my health/magicka/stamina is. I can estimate it plenty well enough to get by just fine. If I can do it, others can do it.

I agree. For immersion, you should know how you are feeling, and the health/magicka/stamina bars give you that information. If I could keep those on and turn off everything else I would but you cannot do that on a console. The only point I was making is that it is not that difficult to play without those bars and the benefits to immersion of not having sneak crosshair and compass outweigh the loss of the bars. If you are on a PC, by all means keep the bars. They are invisible anyway when not in use.

EDIT: I think it would be harder to play a pure mage without a magicka bar. I have not tried that yet. Right now I am playing a nightblade and the only weapons he uses are bound weapons. Its not too bad to keep track of magicka well enough with this kind of build, but a destruction mage would be a nightmare unless you were wearing an enchant suit that drastically reduced or eliminated casting cost.

It's is very hard to shoot a bow without a HUD

This always happens to me with my sword and board and 2-H characters, which is why I don't typically use power attacks. The only character that I use power attacks with is my dual wielder, probably because it is harder for NPC's to dodge those dual swords. And you are right. you don't need the slow time block perk to be able to detect a power attack coming on and just move left or right or interrupt it with a bash.

I don't need an excuse. It's a single player game and I play how I want.

at first it's a bit difficult, but to get used to it I just practiced a bit and picked different spots on trees to shoot at. and just worked out where i had to put the tip of the arrow (in first person view) to where it will land. There's also the targets near guards barracks (like in Falkreath) that you can practice on. i don't know, i just dig the difficulty of it, kinda like shooting an arrow in real life...you're never 100% where you're gonna hit (at least it was for me when i've done it in the past).

as for the health bars...i play with headphones (on xbox) and you can definitely tell when you're close to death...that heartbeat sound really works for me. (you can always go to the items menu at any time and it'll show you your health). same with stamina, when you run low you can hear your guy breathing heavily.

i imagine it would be way more difficult playing a magic based player (with 3 bars to keep track of instead of 2)...i'm doing the sword and board thing with my guy, so it's a bit easier to deal with. (I only use magicka for healing when i'm out of food/potions).

I also started a new character with the hudless version. figured i'd have an easier learning curve that way.

1. Hawks move so your reference point of last shots moves. Not just left or right, up or down, but also backwards and forwards.

2. Arrows have a parabolic trajectory which you have to compensate by aiming higher, how much higher is determined by far the target is, which itself is charging every second.

3. After a certain distance your arrows itself cannot be seen, so you can't even judge how close your shots are.

You need to actually try it to know how hard. It is not something you cam theorycraft.