'But I need to see my health and stamina meters'

No, you really dont. I play on expert and use Iron weapons and armour smithed to fine or superior - NEVER higher. I am very much against being a 1-shot death machine when it comes to Elder scrolls.

So if I can fare on expert with a pretty poor loadout, anyone can. Playing with no HUD makes the game better in so many ways. All of the complaints about immersion I see on here can be remedied by turning off the HUD.

The biggest benefit is the sense of discovery you get yourself, without the GPS compass holding your hand, in both the world and in dungeons.

The connection to your character becomes more intuitive... with feeling dictating your actions rather than an on screen meter. No health meter means you take note of when the screen turns red... no crosshair means you have to shoot your bow with genuine skill rather than playing the line up the crosshair game. No stealth meter means you observe your own movement rather than stealth curser.

No HUD just adds so much to the game. Turning off the music will take it to another level, as the new discovery location sound will not sound. Then you could be standing next to a new ruin and not even notice you've found it. THAT is discovery.

Agreed. Playing the game with the HUD on is like smearing [censored] over the screen before playing. You're experiencing the game in vastly inferior mode until you turn it off.

Congrats! Now stop enforcing that everyone plays how you want them too, without hud!

But yeah, it's very immersive. However, I play on master a legit character and need to chec my health every so often by going to the inventory screen.

Never seen this feature on my xbox version. I guess that's my excuse.

I play with HUD.Never felt the need to turn it off.

I don't play with HUD either.... but I used to, and that is a terrible anology mate, playing with a HUD is in no way like "smearing [censored] on your screen" lmao.

The only time I'll put HUD on is when Im in a place with lots of books, cos I do appreciate being able to see book titles. That is the one small disadvantage of playing no HUD.

What about accuracy as far as archery and ranged magic is concerned? Possible or frustrating?

It wouldn't bother me at all to turn the HUD brightenss all the way down on the Display screen( that's how x-box work's) IF I could still see other thing's Like *take* & *steal*.

I tried that with my newest char, from the cave exit to Riverwood. Picking flower's was a major pain in the tushie. I shot the wolve's with no problem, mostly because I usually have the hud turned down so I can bearly see it. But I don't think I can deal with the picking and "is it takeing or stealing", Picking up book's just to check the titles...etc

What about when you're in someones house and you need to pick up something? Might end up, accidentally, stealing something. I just put tape over my compass.

I'd like to turn off the compass and even the health meters, but I need to be able to aim my bow properly and be able to pick things up.

I'm still hoping the devs will get it together and give us those options. I couldn't quite believe it when the game was released without them after all the talk about it pre release. But yet they give you an option to turn your cross hair off???

No excuse not playing HUDless? How about not wanting to?


seriously play your game the way you want and let other play their own games instead of forcing your flavor of the month on others

Hmm... if I had more free time, I might agree with you, but right now I have a very busy schedule. I only get to play in short bursts, so I just fast travel or follow the quest marker, do the quest and fast travel back.

Maybe in summer I'll try a hardcoe immersive roleplay run w/o HUD, and possibly with some realism mods (hunger, sleep, etc).

I'm happy for you that you can play that way and enjoy it. Personally, I don't see any reason to do it. It seems completely in the class of "No one needs a speedometer in their car - if I can tell how fast I'm going by the pitch of the RPMs, everyone can!" Or "We don't need to waste ink marking the buttons on keyboards. I can touch type, why can't everyone?"



1) That's a personal opinion.

2) I must have played "wrong" with my first character. I didn't become a "1-shot death machine" (except against things far below my level, like you could in earlier games), even though I was playing on Normal and used Smithing. Gosh, I svck.

Ranged combat, magic or archery is much better. I mentioned why in the OP.


What non-items of worth do you really need to pick up in people's houses? carrots? baskets? Most things in an NPC's house arent worth picking.

I can understand turning off the navigation, but I don't understand turning off health. Ffs, health bars are a staple in games. Like jumping are a staple in games. Jumping and health bars. Wtf more do you want?

Seriously though, since we don't get to use our full function of senses in video games, health bars have to represent your "fight or flight" instincts. You know in real life when you're getting beat down or tired. It's not "easy mode" in real life to be aware of these things. So I don't know why it'd be different here. You see health go down, you should probably run. Just like if you picked a fight, and got your nose broken right away, you should probably run.

He's not forcing, he's preaching.

Don't like the idea of playing HUDless? Then just ignore him.

Gotta have the crosshair, and I appreciate the meters too.

That said, I'd love to disable the compass.

I heard there was an .ini tweak to get rid of the compass but keep the other stuff, but can't find it. Anyone know?

Archery with no crosshair is not the blindshooting nightmare you probably think it is. Hitting a moving target with no assistance gives a much greater sense of accomplishment. Archery with no crosshair feels pretty natural after a while.

Picking up items is easy too, after maybe 30 mins it becomes a non-issue.

No thanks. I have enough of a challenge already.

That's awesome for you and I play pretty much the same as far as the HUD is concerned, but don't try to force it on other people.

Besides, there is one small flaw in your argument: The wildly innacurate object taking functionality. Even if you did have the crosshairs turned on (which I don't), half the time, the object that is targeted to "Take" is not what is centered where the crosshairs would be. This is a major problem if playing without a HUD b/c you can steal a different object instead of activating/taking something else or even when you are trying to talk to a shopkeeper, etc. Aside from not stealing stuff that wasn't intended, it just makes it plain annoying to pick something up.

Seeing the "Press 'E' to Take" text come up at least tells you when you have correctly targeted an object. On the other hand, if I have to spend several seconds trying to pick something up because it isn't being targeted correctly in the center of the screen, then it is very immersion breaking.

I'd love to be able to disable the HUD entirely, or everything including the Compass, but until this severe flaw in the interface is fixed (if ever) then the best I can do is set the opacity to a barely noticeable level.

I play hudless and really enjoy it, but not everyone is me. To each their own I say.

When I first saw this thread title I was all like, That's some nice flamebait there. But then I read a little bit and I was like, I guess I really don't need to see my health bar. And then I skimmed the post and realized that if I turned off my HUD the compass and quest markers would go away, and I was like, Woah snap that would be great!

So now I'm wondering why I've been playing with the HUD on this entire time.

? the mod that adds detail to quest descriptions.

Not for you but others might have some use for them. Or it can be in your own house or in a shop.