Like all First Person Shooters, having a strong HUD can make or break 'immersion' in the game. Some titles barely show a HUD at all, allowing the eyes to not get distracted by things other than the environment or what is happening in front of you. Others fill the HUD with numbers and pictures and in many cases this has been made fun of countless times.
What I'm suggesting Bungie do with their new title, Destiny, is allow the player to turn on/off what he would like to see on his/her HUD.
For example, I see two ammo counters on the screen for the same gun and I keep asking myself, why have this? I can understand that on the left, the ammo temporarily shows so you know what munitions you have, but to have it out permanently somewhat defeats the purpose of it being on the gun.
I'm also not a big fan of the other player's levels being on screen. The same way an MMO wouldn't normally display this unless I selected them, I would hope would apply to Destiny. (even though it isn't an MMO, duh). Perhaps having their level appear in a box next to their name would be better suited if the cross-hair was over the player. That way I only receive a level if I'm directly looking at them. This could even apply to enemies as well.
I'm a big fan of immersive games. I grew up with titles like STALKER. I just feel that with all the hard work of making the Destiny world feel alive and vibrant with the great settings and sound work, I wouldn't want it to just feel like any other game. I don't want to say this because it's very vague "I want it to be like Borderlands, but a more serious and immersive experience." there...I said it.
Thoughts from anyone?
-
I definitely think that less can be more, but in terms of the ammo counter, we already know that not every gun is going to have an ammo counter ([i]Thunderlord[/i]). It's also going to be nice to have spare ammo shown. Ammo counters are pretty much a staple of FPSes, sans a hardcore mode. As for all the names and levels showing up over players heads, there have been options for how this is displayed in previous Bungie games, such as [i]always on[/i] or [i]show on hover[/i], so I hope they will keep these options moving forward. I'm personally a fan of a simple icon that hovers over their heads to show friendly locations. [url=http://www.bungie.net/7_Kantox/en-us/View/Profile/index?mid=3934872]@Kantox[/url] mentioned being able to quickly select which Travelerjuice power is ready and highlight it somehow, but I believe that only two powers can be active at any one time, a minor one mapped to LB, and a stronger one mapped to LB+RB. Personally I think that they should map crouch to RS click, melee to B, and have a third power or grenades mapped to RB (seeing as RS click currently does nothing). The radar and weapon info position is something I can get used to, but I've always preferred them both either low or high, not split. Having a weapon covering the right side of the screen makes sense that everything is stacked left, but I'm hoping to be able to finally make my character left-handed for once because I am, and then I'd hope I'd be able to switch the HUD sides.