Thief 4 has a ton of customisation options for its UI

http://community.eidosmontreal.com/blogs/Stealing-Time-Episode-4?theme=thief

Display Options

Each of these can be turned on or off individually based on your preferences:

* Navigation prompts

* Interaction prompts

* Waypoint markers

* Threat icons

* Threat health meters

* Mini-map

* Mini-map rotation

* Reticle feedback

* Journal updates

* Pick-up notifiers

* Light gem

* Object highlight

* Loot glint

* Lockpick helper

* Frame search helper

* Garrett narrated hints

* Health meter (on, off, or fade over time)

* Focus meter (on, off, or fade over time)

* Ammo counter (on, off, or fade over time)

Here's a picture that shows you how the difficulties can be altered too:

http://cdn.eidosinteractive.com/mtl/marketing/Community/Blog/Thief/blog_customdiff_big.jpg

I've never seen so many customisable options in one game before.

This sounds encouraging right?

What I don't really understand is why they've made this so complicated though.

The original Thief games had three difficulty settings, Normal, Hard and Expert. Why not just slap an Easy one in that has all the icons and such while the other difficulties are just like regular Thief?

If you're playing on the hardest difficulty, why would you want those extra aids on anyway?

I might have to listen to the podcast again because I don't understand the points system in the screenshot above.

EDIT: The points are for the leaderboard so if you turn off like Focus you gain additional points on the board.

I don't understand why this is an issue for you, why restrict us to easy, med, or hard modes when we can fine tune the difficulty and realism? Would you rather they force their hard mode on you or make your own hard mode tailored to your desire? Hardly complicated.

It is complicated because you have to choose a difficulty, working out what that difficulty is about, then customise it and then customise the UI.

No one would be forcing a hard mode. You'd choose Easy, Normal, Hard or Expert. The easiest one has all the UI crap on and the others have it off by default.

That's so much simpler. This might not be complicated for you or me, but think about some of the middle ground people.

They might want a challenge but don't necessarily come onto message boards to have it explained to them beforehand.

You can say the same about racing arcade/simulator games such as Shift 2 and GRiD - you can choose the level of realizm with the assists, you can play it more arcade or more like simulator.

In the new thief you can actually choose whatever you feel that will be more suit for you in difficulty level that you'll enjoy it.

In Dishonored you could get those artifacts as well by just following the heart indicator, you could also turn it off and just explore the whole map and find it yourself.

check it out for yourself: http://truepcgaming.com/2012/10/22/dishonored-pc-settings-configuration-guide/

That's great news, I don't see the problem.

You're making it sound more complicated than what it really is. The difficulties and customizable options will have detailed descriptions explaining how each of them affect gameplay, so if you don't have reading comprehension issues or ADD, it shouldn't be that hard to read through them and tweak them accordingly. Now, what you're suggesting wouldn't give me the freedom to choose a more challenging difficulty mode but still have the option of keeping some of the assists on, like for example health, ammo, focus and mini-map. Pretty damn simple, no?