Umm...bit too far

How is that too far? This is how people played rpg's in the 90's.

That would drive ne crazy I would be looking at the tape the while time I was trying to play my game.

Well, that's what I was doing with the compass. I mean, when you really get down to it, most of the pertinent information you need is all right there. It tells you what direction you're going, what direction your quests are in, what's near by and where the enemies are. The only reason to actually look at the screen is to make sure you don't trip over a rock and to aim.

You could probably almost play Skyrim on instruments alone.

Very true, but you use tape too? I wish they had a default option in the game to deactivate the compass, that thing is an irritating hand holding mechanism that holds the game back exploration wise.

No. I'm on a PC so I can turn it off. In fact, I use the mod iHUD to customize my entire HUD to my liking.

This is why I want Skyrim on PC and I cannot wait to get it on PC.
Is ihud made by the same people that made SkyUI those guys did an impressive job there.

Agree with the OP.

This thread inspired me to try the no HUD and i'm so glad i did. I'm on Xbox, so it's all or nothing. archery took a little while to get used to, but doing a little target practice at the beginning helped quite a bit. as much as I love the music from the game I also turned that off too and it really helps with the immersion. I find i'm getting a lot more jump scares from the game now (which is always fun)...especially from sneaky sabre cats. I don't think i can ever go back to the normal hud now.

I'd like to disable the quest markers more than the compass. I don't think knowing what direction you're going is so bad, but I don't know if there is really enough journal content to find things w/o the quest markers.

In MW when somebody told you go fetch they gave you directions or you had to ask around a bit but eventually you could get pretty elaborate directions to a place. Not so in skyrim.

I like playing with no compass markers so the compass is, literally, just a compass. No location, enemy, quest, whatever markers. iHud is a great mod.

I do, however, play with the crosshair. My aiming is bad enough with the crosshair, I'd never hit anything without it. xD

I wish I had that option. I am on console, so the only way to loose the bleeping compass is to go no HUD. You have to guess at your health, but with some practice you can get fairly accurate at it and you can always check the skills screen if you really need to know. The annoying thing is that you miss out on all messages from the game, and I like to know what reward I just got for completing a quest, was it gold, was it an item (and if so what). With no HUD there is no easy way to tell what the reward is since my inventory is so large that searching through it to see if I got something new is a pain.

If I had the option to go no compass and no sneak crosshair, I would take it, but being on console, I have to settle for no HUD.

Re: the OP, yes it is amazing. Really makes you feel like you are exploring when there are no compass icons and those bleeping red dots giving away enemies locations are just no fun. Crosshair/sneak crosshair makes aiming too easy and distracts from immersion. No sneak crosshair also means you have to really pay attention to your surroundings to determine whether you are hidden. Much more immersive than staring at an "eye" in the middle of your screen.

EDIT: I do turn the HUD on in my house if I want to read books in my liabrary. Otherwise it is a real pain to select a single volume from yoru shelf since you cannot read the spines without the HUD.

I also turn the music down to the lowest notch before the music becomes inaudible. I would turn it off completely for increased immersion (and sometimes I do) but it is beautiful music and I usueally like hearing it in the background.

I play on expert mostly. I don't have that good of hand eye coordination or twitch skills, but playing this way forces me to pay more attention to terrain and battle strategy (like with bears, shield bash then flank) instead of trying to approach every opponent head on. Its more fun, at least for me, to have to "think" about battles. Sometimes if I am tired or just in the mood to kill stuff without having to strategize battles, I will bump it down to Adept.

You really have to pay attention to landmarks. Occassional map checks are necessary, but if you pay attention to landmarks and where you are going, you do not have to check your map as often as you might think. You can also use the clairvoyance spell. With no HUD, you can have a quest activated and not get the quest arrow (since it is part of the HUD and by turning that off, you loose everything on the screen). I only use clairvoyance on rare occassions, but it feels like less of a cheat spell when you are goign with no HUD.

If Skyrim didn't have a compass with quest markers, I would have uninstalled it within a couple of days and forgotten all about it, due to extreme obscurity. The "map" wouldn't have helped.

I suspect many other people would have done the same, including people who are now saying they don't need a compass.

Not sure what platform you are on, but I have a solution to this problem that works on the PS3 and can probably be translated to other platforms.

I can go to third person view and hold the right stick down and zoom in and out with the left stick. If you zoom all the way out, your character will be relatively small on the screen with a wide view. If you leave it like that, you can see more of your surroundings in thrid person view when you are exploring, but the downside is that it takes a few seconds to toggle from first to third person view, which can be a problem when in combat.

The solution is to hold down the right stick in third person view and use the left stick to zoom all the way in, so you can only see the upper torso of your character in third person view. Now you won't get the wide view when in thrid person, but you will be able to switch back and forth between first and third person almost instantly.

I typically zoom out when exploring outdoors but try to remember to zoom back in before entering caves or anyplace I think I am likely to run into serious combat.