Destiny is console exclusive, which means almost all players play on a television, not a monitor. Many of these players play on plasma screens, millions in fact. The average play session of Destiny is logged by Bungie at 4 hours. I fall around that mark, and that's about all I've used my TV for lately, as I'm sure is the same for many players.
This leads to a huge problem, one that may have already permanently damaged my near $3K TV, the HUD is burnt into my display.
I'm a very proud owner of the "65in Panasonic VT60, and I paid a very pretty penny for it. Millions of others also playDestiny on plasmas, and the fact is no matter how "worn in" a plasma is, it is still prone to burn-in or image retention.
Either can occur after a static image is left on the screen for an extended period of time, like say, playing Destiny for a few hours a day, with no other content appearing on the TV in between.
From my recent average playtime, I now have a retained image of the bottom left HUD area burnt in my display; super bar, all 3 weapon slots, among blur where ammo is counted and so on.
I left my TV wiping for 12 hours, and the image is still there.
(Update 11/19) My TV has been wiping for almost 24 hours, and still has the HUD clearly burned in.
(Update 11/20) My TV has been wiping for almost 48 hours straight. The HUD is still there, but instead of a dark gray shadow, it seems to be a tinge of pink. This is a bad sign)
There is a simple solution for preventing this, and still being able to enjoy long play sessions. Battlefield 4 got this perfect right off the bat, they added the option to adjust HUD opacity in the video options. This completely stomped the possibility for image retention, and even after hundreds of hours of gameplay I never had a problem.
For those who don't know, this option would make it possible to have your HUD slightly see-through so the pixels are being stimulated.
This is a very big deal, and has the potential to ruin many plasmas, only from playing Destiny for an average play session, even with days in between.
BUNGIE PLEASE, add a simple HUD opacity slider and put all your plasma owners at ease.
Love, every Destiny player with a plasma.
Please comment to get this noticed.
-
Honestly I'm surprised any good quality sets still have this issue. My Sony and Samsungs have options for auto pixel adjustment that moves pixels around on an undetectable level to keep burn in from occurring. I think the opacity slider from battlefield is probably meant more to see the actual action and not so much meant for burn in prevention, but probably ended up being a positive side effect they discovered. I've never heard of a game addressing this, as it's a hardware issue.