Poll: FPS: Time for the HUD to evolve?

[hopeneverdies]

I like the Metroid Prime 2 HUD. Ammo and beams along the right. Health across the top. Map on the top left and visors on the bottom left and then I would adjust the options so it seems like you are viewing it through the actual helmet to up the immersion rather than weaken it.
If you don't have a suit, a minimalist approach works like the HL HUD

 

[Cid Silverwing]

Developers need to get this into their thick heads.

Crosshairs, minimap like the one in Battlefield 2, health + stamina meter, ammo counter, damage direction indicators, no health regeneration and grenade throwback.

Above features should be made mandatory for every single FPS game.

 

[Same River New Water]

That reminds me of the Sanity Meter in Eternal Darkness. If your sanity level drops too low, you start hallucinating all kinds of crazy shit!

Woah! That sounds pretty cool. How'd that work? The only one I can think of is in Farenheit/Indigo Prophecy, but that was really a health meter in disguise.

Well, you had a health bar, but you also had a sanity meter that would drop when you encountered scary things, like walking skeletons, and especially when you got attacked by them. As it got nearer to empty, weird things would start to happen: you'd walk into a room and be surrounded by zombies and none of the buttons would work, or you'd slowly start sinking through the floor. If it got really low, the game would pretend to crash entirely; from memory I think you had to restart the console, but it saved your game.

 

[TheTygerfire]

twitter feeds...

Dude, you read my mind. I would love to follow the end bosses Twitter updates.

"lol he still has his controls inverted"

 

[TaborMallory]

I like complex HUDs where they make sense (i.e. Metroid Prime, SW: Republic Commando, etc.). Otherwise, I prefer no HUD whatsoever.

 

[j0z]

I want HUD! but only Health, Ammo, crosshair, and radar (if applicable)
I don't like FPS' that have no HUD (I'm looking at you Resistance 2!) It seems to take me out of the loop. I want to know how many HP I have left, EXACTLY, not try to guess how close I am to dying by looking at the red border around my screen! Also, no regenerating health!

 

[roboosh]

it is evolving...

 

[Avida]

Give me minimal HUD in slngle player as its much prettier, but clutter the hell out of it in multi - its never wise to run out/hide back based on 'im probably ok'

 

[Marv21]

For once the Watchmen MOVIE gave me a good idea!

How about screw the HUD, and if its in the future give us some damn Nite Owl goggles...you know
1. See in the Dark
2. See fingerprints
3. See Weapons/types
4. (Kinda Batman: Arkahm Asylumish but) Heart Pulse
5. Damage on Enemy, Where? And on u

thats the kind of hud I want!

 

[The Political Gamer]

I like the TF2 HUD, you can make it smaller.

 

[Shurikens and Lightning]

Well tactical games like Graw and for some reason Bad company for me.

I need as much info as possible. I need to know were is the enemy and my best course of action based on the data.

But sometimes no hud is fun for said immersion effect if I dont care about my k/d ratio.

 

[quack35]

I like Far Cry 2's minimal HUD. It only came up if you started shooting someone, and even then it was small.

 

[kokirisoldier]

I tend to play a lot of COD4 and always in hardcore mode. For those who dont play this means that bullets do far more damage and there is no HUD.

No cross hair, no health gauges, no area maps or ammo count, nothing.

The screen is completely uncluttered. If you want to aim then you have to press the aim button which brings up the iron sight/scope of your gun.

While not to be rude...welcome to real combat.

I love the Hardcore mode for the same reasons you mentioned. 1-4 shot kills (bullets doing what they were ment to do????) No maps, precisely! Unless you have a Blue force tracker (army thing) you really don't know just what to expect.

Also when are FPS's going to drop the whole hip fire thing?

 

[frenchtoast1337]

I think that we need to do evolve it. In Dead Space, there was no HUD, you looked at the character to tell how much ammo you had, how your health was, and other such things. We need more HUDS like that. Or, we could have no HUD at all, and have the character bring up a map or check his/her health.

 

[Clashero]

I love overly intricate huds and interfaces, because I love useless information.

This precisely. It's one of the reasons I love Civilization IV. No other game can provide with so much useless info so quickly. Not only that, it actually presents it in a way that makes it feel more important than it actually is. "Oh, I see my culture rate from 1200 to 1600 looks like a sinusoidal wave. Most fascinating!"

Since space marines are the hot thing of this century (who knows they might actually come to existence in real life b4 2100) i think they should try to do like Dead Space, where the HUD was replaced by visual indications on your suit, but that limits it to third person shooters.

Staying space-marine-ish you could always take the metroid prime approach and make it seem like an integrated part of the game (it was info displayed for samus in the visor of her helmet) or anything else that makes it seem like less of a interface.

Maps are usefull in some games BF2 for insatnce where it's important to know the location of vehicles/teamamtes spotted enemies incoming airstrikes etc. but if the game doesn't need it to work, i would prefer a map that you had to toggle on, like you would unwrap the map/pull out your gps/whatever.

A nice way to display health without a bar would be nice.

Conclusively i think HUD should be as minimal as possible, and if theres a well functioning way to replace it with something that makes more sense "in-game wise" use it.

Pretty much that. Also, the Ghost Busters game is going to have the HUD be the proton pack!
I wonder if I could get my vacuum upgreaded like that.

I cried tears of joy.
Also: a Proton Pack vacuum cleaner would be so amazing it could only be bested by an actual proton pack.

 

[frenchtoast1337]

I agree with you. If we have more things like that, it would be great! If you get hit, the HUD should flicker, or if you run out of "energy" (like in Half-Life) the screen should shut down. Gamers want to feel like their character, so why not make them feel like it?

 

[bjj hero]

Developers need to get this into their thick heads.

Crosshairs, minimap like the one in Battlefield 2, health + stamina meter, ammo counter, damage direction indicators, no health regeneration and grenade throwback.

Above features should be made mandatory for every single FPS game.

Like any soldier on earth would attempt to throw back a grenade. You dont know what the timer is on it, thats before you consider if its been cooked. If you are having health or stamina then you do need to be able to keep track. Im personally bored of cross hairs. Hip firing should go the way of 2d sprites in fps. Finally I dont like mini maps on FPS. you get little or no advantage from flanking around if the enemy can keep a constant track of you on the map.

Im also sick of soldiers who can absorb 30 rounds of gun fire, but thats going off topic.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

For me I love as many info feeds as possible. Ammo, reticle, part-specific damage, energy, radar, comms, twitter feeds...

Thank you for making my day more fun. The idea of a Twitter feed is absolutely hilarious.

Combine: @Freeman Stop killing us already!

 

[ParkourMcGhee]

No actually, just the opposite. HUDs have been getting more and more minimal and as a result games have been getting more dumbed down. Compare Deus Ex, which has a complicated as hell HUD system and great gameplay with your average modern FPS.

I'd go with a combination actually.

I'd like a minimized HUD (COD4 Hardcore), but the option to open panels for a map and bag and stuff to keep the RPG/FPS pair going. To be fair it's OK to have a no story mindless shooter every now and then, but there's no point in every single game being like that. it gets boring FAST, especially with poorly made, cliched, and repetitive story lines.

 

[BolognaBaloney]

I like games like dead space that find ways to integrate the hud into the actual game.