I know there have been similar threads to this but that is because this feature has been long wanted by many people and seems like it would be very easy to implement and have a huge impact for players such as myself.

Playing on PS3 I have either the option of having the entire HUD visible or none at all. Playing with none at all is just not fun for me on master difficulty If I cant tell when to heal and block or how much magicka I have left for spells. Having no crosshair or steal tag visible could also lead to been thrown in jail for mistakenly clicking an owned iron sword. Having to manually open the map to see which direction I'm heading in would get very annoying fast.

The worst thing about the HUD is the location markers completely destroy any real sense of exploration since the icon for a word wall or dwarven ruin will appear a good minute or so running distance away in a 360 degree angle. Discovering a new location is never real discovery if you have been given the heads up by a large icon long before reaching it, I want to be surprised and excited if I stumble across a word wall and not just be following big icons to find new locations.

Given the option I would definitely turn off the enemies red dots on the compass, I can never be ambushed by bandits or wolves if I see the red dot approaching and its worse for dragons as they can never swoop down from behind and catch me by surprise if I can simply spin around and find the red dot. The health bars make combat easier too and having the option to turn them off would make fights more exciting and give me a surprise when a finishing move is performed

Here is something along the line of what I would like to see under display options. Includes options for other players.

Enemy health bars on [off]
Enemy red dots on [off]
Crosshairs [on] off
Location markers on [off]
Custom location marker [on] off
Compass [on] off
Health [on] off
Magicka [on] off
Stamina [on] off

This little change would greatly enrich my playing experience and offer a genuine sense of exploration and discovery unavailable to me right now. It is needed for console players but could also be of use to pc users who are not so great with finding and installing the correct mods. I know some bethesda staff read these forums and I would love to know if they ever plan of implementing these simple features and if not I'd rather them gently let me down and just tell me. Please bethesda, please.

It has been said many times that console players should have the option to customize their HUD too.

Without the option to customize the HUD I wouldn't even want to play the game. The default HUD includes too many hand-holding features to my liking.

agreed. They give us a bunch of hand-holding stuff I don't want but won't show us relevant information that we need, like active effects. wtf

i mitigate the 'HUD for idiots' by making it transparent. it makes some parts of gameplay more difficult but its better than the alternative

^^^ this. Though not completely gone, I turn it down enough so that It's really hard to see in "day light", but in dim light or against a dark background it can. I also turn the "brightness" down so that when it's cloudy at night or the Moon's aren't full it is as dark as the x-box alow's it to be.

Absolutely 100% agree OP. I was rather dissapointed when I saw what scant options there actually are. A detailed options menu says a lot about a game dev.

But meh... game is easily playable with no HUD at all.

I agree with the OP.

You don't really need an option for custom marker since, well, it's custom and you can remove it yourself. The H/M/S could be combined into one option too ... just thought if we make their job easier, they're more likely to answer our pleas.

I still can't believe they didn't have this on release with all the talk about it pre release. I'd love to be able to turn those stupid red dots and the compass markers off.

ya know, it just speaks to the general lack of finish on the game.

should really be able to do is:

Health on :: off :: [always]
Magicka [on] :: off :: always
Stamina [on] :: off :: always