Ability and Skill Graphics in Warhammer

First off, can you see what your teammates are doing on the battlefield? Can you tell when they cast a certain spell, or use a certain ability? For me that answer has to be not really right now. Now I checked my settings, and I haven’t changed them, I know I selected to see what my teammates are doing, and my graphics settings are quite high. So I should be seeing all sorts of nice animations… but I’m not. And I thinking they never see mine either.

They don’t see my swordmaster spinning in a 360, winds blowing through the air. They don’t see my small aoe blast of force coming from me. I doubt they even see the blade enchants. You know why I say that? Because I can’t see them on any other SM. Its interesting, and maybe they did this because they couldn’t control lag otherwise in large scale battles, but it kind of draws back a little bit on being able to tell if a teammate is good or did something helpful other than trying to decipher the scoreboard at the end of a scenario which we all know is only good for so much.

The only things I can tell my teammates are doing is when someone gets knocked back, knocked down, or uses one of very few abilities that all can see like turrets. This leaves an interesting impression on a player, now while it hasn’t deterred me form playing, it has often left me focusing only on what I’m doing in battle, because my friends for the most part all look like they are wandering around auto attacking at best. Am I just not paying enough attention?

I’m going to try to dive deeper into this when I play tonight. Really look in depth at the settings again. Its just weird running around, feeling like my guy is blasting and blowing things up with these great animations, only to feel like everyone else is jib jabbing and looking rather dull while doing so unless they happen to be knocking someone down or blasting them backwards. It also leaves me with the impression that there are a ton of things I am not seeing my enemy doing. Am I missing a certain hit, skill they are using, because it looks like all the others. The action isn’t that fast, is it?

I know in other games where pvp happens there was the element of knowing what your enemy was using, because you can see it. Even obvious things like fireballs from BW and doombolts from sorcs are hard to see if I ever see them at all. Do you think that moves should be more obvious to emulate other games where you were able to see intense action with very cool graphics from yourself, your teammates and your enemies? Or would you rather have it how it is, with enemies not knowing exactly what you are using even if they know your class?