for clarification, i wish that skyrim had a more developed blood/breathing system that was precise. as well, as ladyonthemoon states, you absolutely get used to judging your health and DiD without a hud on master/legendary is undeniably possible as that's what i do. (death is rarely due to misjudging my health.)

let me say that again: you absolutely get used to judging your health. based on enemy type, weapon type, pc level and hits taken. (one thing i did early on and actually did while doing a recent Legend DiD run from the beginning for the first time is keeping the hud on for a few battles or checking your stats after a battle.)

i don't have great surround sound, but, like turija said, with the music off you know the enemy direction since beth did a good job of making the sound louder when you're facing them.

as for aiming, it seems like i take more time lining up the shot and missing more when i play with it on, instead, of just judging and letting it fly. striking moving targets from a distance is so satisfying.

picking up items accidentally just isn't really an issue either at this point in time.

having the hud on makes the battles much easier for me, but, i'll take the exchange every time. as for sneaking, i can't even consider myself a sneak-thief if i have the hud on. how difficult is it to steal something when all you have to do is look for the magic eye?

i'm glad its an option, but, in the next game i DEMAND, well, lol, hope beth does a much better job in allowing us to customize the hud/music options.

There are only three reasons I ever turn the HUD on (1) to use the crosshair to read individual books on a bookshelf; (2) to read on screen text, like if I want to know what the quest reward is; and (3) for my HMS status bars. I've tried playing without those but never got very good at estimating them, particularly the magic bar.

I agree that they need a more developed blood/breathing system. That would make playing with no HUD much more enjoyable.

It's probably easier to judge how much health you have left on Legendary and Master than Adept since most things tougher than a mudcrab or a common bandit or low level draugr can kill you in just a couple hits on those high difficulty settings, at least at lower levels before you get a really good AR and lots of health build up. So, if you get hit once by anything tough, you pretty much know that you need to heal before you are going to be able to take another hit.

I've been able to estimate health a little without the HUD, but was never that good at it. My most successful no HUD character was a sneak archer who rarely got hit. I played him to about level 30 and he never died. Finally retired him because I could not bear the thought of him dying.

You have convinced me to give it another try though, so this weekend when I play Turija Vassinus, I will go ahead and turn the HUD all the way off. Last weekend I had the HUD dimmed, but you can still see the red dots, and if I've got those on, my eyes tend to go toward them whenever there is a tense situation and I temporarily loose track of the enemy. I find it so much more rewarding to look and listen to the ingame clues.

you know, you may be absolutely right. on master/legend you just know that you can only take so many hits from whichever enemies and it does mean a lot of re-positioning and time-buying to heal.

however, i really did spend a lot of time "studying" how to gauge my health and i'd hope i could learn it for the lower difficulties, as well. i'd check mid-battle or certain enemy attacks and always immediately after a battle to see where the bars were.

it's that same practice that allows me to judge magicka drain for the different types of spells i use, especially, healing, lol.

the more you do it you're bound to become good at gauging your bar levels. not perfect, but, like i said, i don't usually die because of misjudging my bars. it's more about trying to delay having to heal or re-position or get one more hit in

edit: a great way of learning how combat impacts your bars is by prolonging battles to raise your skills. you develop a sixth sense, as well as, knowing exactly that it takes x number of seconds to raise my health to full, etc.. you learn to judge how much each spell impacts your bar and the recharge rates and you get to see the damage taken with a shield, shield vs powerswing, no shield with alt spells, etc.. then, when you turn off the hud you have a good idea of making sound judgments. well, i try anyways;)

I have an issue with judging my damage taken by type of enemy. Here's what it is. A while back I was going to high Hrothgar. in the course of the trip, I went to that dwemer place by the Imperial camp,and took out the bandits there. I got hit by a couple of arrows, but my health never went below 50%.. I fought the local dragon went on to High Hrothgar and was a couple of levels higher before by the time I started my return trip to Whiterun.

So, on the way, I thought I'd go do that tomb thing on the other side of the river... the one you can get to by crossing a downed log across the top of the falls. so anyway, I start across and there's this bandit out there sitting on the log. He jumps up and one-shots me, and it's game over before I even draw my own weapon. That's where the problem begins. How do you account for an enemy who is nothing special but one-shots you because you've gone up a level or two since you fought the last one like him? Honestly, I was sjhocked, I had no idea he COULD one-shot me, eh? However, if I'd been not quite killed, but went on the enemy type, I would likely not have thought I was in trouble without a HUD...

Yep, a number of times I got a cinematic view of my character’s death with no warning other than the controller suddenly not responding. There’s no chance to pause the game and use a potion, but I don’t do that anyway. I can still remember the complete shock of Zuuri getting her neck broken on a sunny day near White River Watch. And as you know, with DiD that was my last view of Zuuri. Dragon kill-cams wrecked my nerves because I could never tell if it was me or the dragon who was about to die due to the camera angle weirdness. I much prefer my modded HUD with toggleable and fade-away elements. To the point of the thread, I find it more realistic to know how much health, etc I have left as well as where the enemies are and which way is north. I just found the enemy health bar and compass markers too awful to deal with, so I did without.

Of course I would never suggest this for you folks who are doing a complete game without reloading on Legendary, Rick! I’ve never played higher than Master and then only rarely, and yeah when those characters die it tends to be from one hit. (Like Achille. Sigh.)

The other thing that was nice about no HUD was exciting sneaking. I really had to watch what the NPCs were doing and guess if they suspected something was amiss. You know, I should turn the sneak eye off now that I can.

Why would they? I used them together for most of my Skyrim adventure.

Yeah, the game really shines for thieves with no HUD. You don't need status bars when you are sneaking into someone's house at night or picking their pocket and Beth did a really good job with the comments and movements of NPCs so the player can really get a good idea of whether someone is watching if you pay close attention, but you never know for sure. So, thieving becomes much more exciting with the HUD off. You never know when someone will shout an alarm to the guards and you may have to flee for your life.

Well, in that case, I'm going to start using them both...

It's not "no indication". When your health goes low, you can hear your heart beat in your ears, provided you play with a headset of course and you turn off the music. The faster the heartbeat, the more in danger of dying you are.

Sorry for the lag. But yes they seem to work just fine together. Got a guy to level 82 with both of those mods on.

Your bow does/did, but Skyrim is not technologically advanced as real life in 2000s is. People in medieval times certainly didn't have sights on their bows, did they?

As for the rest, yeah, you don't get to see/smell the traces, but you can still hear stuff, especially if you turn the music off, and you still don't see anyone on your compass as long as they're not hostile, so if you're an archer who sneak attacks his game you'll find every enemy way before anything appears on your compass, so that's pretty useless. In real life you don't fight a wolf on your own with a knife, and if a wolf would realize you're tougher than he "thought", and he'd try to sneak up to you behind a rock while you're fighting another wolf, you certainly wouldn't take your sweet time to check the traces and learn of his position behind said rock.

It all comes down to this- what's more comfortable to you. Try turning the hud off entirely, and play like that for a while. After a while you'll be the best judge of how much you like or dislike it.

I play with the HUD, but it's pretty transparent and I've disabled the compass. Most of the time all I see is the faint crosshairs and a few active effect icons in the upper right corner of the screen. Health, Magicka and Stamina appear when less than max. Dialogue subtitles are usually off, but I've been known to turn them on when playing certain mods with less than clear voice acting or actors speaking near a loud noise source like a waterfall.

And on an Xbox, the controller starts to pulsate, so you can feel the heartbeat through your hands as you hear it. Unfortunately, the heartbeat typically does not start until your health gets really low, by which time it may be too late, unless you are really quick at healing and after healing, I noticed the heartbeat continued for a few seconds even after my character was at full health, which was confusing in the heat of battle.

well, playing on master/legend, with my self-imposed rules/restrictions, as well as, DiD has basically instilled a health first attitude in my play. if i got one-shot killed (don't get me started on THAT, lol.) then, well, nothing really changed. plus, there's no real loss if i over-heal my pc by a bit. you'll get better at judging when to stop.

however, i never take anything for granted nor judge that bandit by his cover: if i get hit even once, i heal and evade or hide and run

like i was saying, i recently did the Legend DiD from the start for the very first time and after keeping the hud on for awhile i had to turn it back off, since, i really did feel like i was cheating myself. it makes the combat much easier and those times when you die it's still usually from taking a couple hits from high level enemies anyways and you would've died with the hud on, too, lol.

at the very least, if you don't like it or grow accustomed to it, it will make you a much better player when you return to hud on. in the same way, i'm sure you feel DiD has made you a better player. (with your sight/hearing issue, perhaps, lowering the difficulty one notch lower than your norm to start.)

btw, as others said, thieving/sneaking is perrrrfect with the hud off and beth really did a great job. (reminds me of how great playing assassin's creed 1 is with the hud off, since, it was actually originally designed for it.)

We've already been through the medieval sight thing, it's just a page back or so...

As to the archer thing, I guess that's fine... if you're a sneaky archer type, but even then if the other critter is say, behind a boulder, and you walk around it and find yourself face to face with something unkind, it's nice to know if he/she doesn't happen to be alone, and the whole crowd is going hostile. I might just stand and fight a single Saber cat but two saber cats and three nearby wolves attracted by the ruckus might be a different thing. If I see all those red dots, I know i'm in a lot of trouble.

I real life, I've been stalked by cougar and once a black bear. With the cougar (the first time), I wasn't armed... I was actually sorta in my backyard. it just happened my back yard was about 50 acres of partially (and densely) forested hillside. With the bear, I had a .32 caliber Winchester lever-action rifle, but I had no confidence it would put down a bear fast enough. My response was the same both times.

I found a place where my back was covered and I had a full field of view to the front. With the cougar, I was in the lee under a downed log, the second against a rocky outcropping I was fairly sure I could scale if I had to. I crawled into my respective hidey-holes, and remained motionless until I knew where the critters were, so you could say that I did indeed take the time to look for traces. In reality, running is a very bad option. Would I fight a wolf with a knife?... yeah, but I'd be happier with a knife and a big stick... In that vein of thought, I once fought off a pack of wild dogs with a motorcycle helmet and discriminating usage of my steel toed boots...

Ah yeah, my bad, I didn't feel like reading through everything written so far, but I was guessing that might have come up.

My point is, if you run up to a baddie, and you see just him, you won't notice his 5 friends feeding behind a bush who just got alarmed by all the noise you and their wolf friend started to make. In a scenario where you aren't stalked but full on attacked you'll only see what's in your eye-sight, you most probably wouldn't notice another wofl charging at your back. Your last examples aren't really usable for game mechanics as critters there, sadly, aren't smart enough to actually stalk a player, but if you look at the red dots as recognizing a prey that's stalking you and isn't yet fully hostile, I think that kinda beats the meaning of being stalked. Basically, I look at it like on a radar, or having psychic powers. It can explain some things you mentioned, but I think it offers way more than what a skilled hunter can do.

Yeah I see HUD as compensating for the variables you can't have in gameplay. I feel like neither HUD nor non HUD is realistic, its just whether one likes the challenge or not.