I think a visible parry indicator when you use parry would be nice to ensure fairness across the classes. That is because classes like Uruk Maceman and Gondor Captain have a visual indicator (using entity particles) when you activate the active effect ability. The same case applies to Shield Bash through particles and hammer ability with launching up. As a result, parry classes can easily counter abilities like this, such as blocking the active melee effect when they see it activated or preventing getting knocked back from Shield Bash with parry.
I don't think it's fair that I can see they use their active melee effect and just parry it, meanwhile any class cannot do the same against me when I have the parry class. I even believe that comes close to borderline cheating.
I concur, but want to add that there are other cases where a "boosted" visual indicator makes sense.
Gundabad Orc, Umbar Deepsurge, and any other kill-boosted classes. It's not always clear who got the kill in larger fights unless you're paying attention to death messages, and since Gundabad Orc doesn't get any boost on assists, it would be a useful indicator of already existing knowledge to help determine whether the player suddenly poses a bigger threat, especially for slightly delayed deaths due to kb or lava.
Classes temporarily being boosted by a horn or banner. This would mostly just improve how intuitive the range of horn classes is, both for horn player themselves + enemy team. Banner boosts being visible too would really just be for consistency.
Drink-boost classes (e.g. Longbeard Veteran w/ Dwarven Ale, Uruk Berserker w/ Orc Draught). I'm not entirely sure these two need to be counted, since the drinking sound giving a reminder to keep an eye out for if that specific class has potion particles actually makes the threat decently obvious, but thought I'd mention it to be more comprehensive.
My main question is how it would actually be indicated visually, and below are some of my personal thoughts. Some ideas I've considered and why I think they suck:
Since it's a duration effect, there is an argument for using the glowing effect to display full extent of duration, but I think that with how it's currently used on horn classes & heroes (both targets that usually get focused), it would be counterintuitive to use to display someone who is likely not worth focusing at that point as they're in eat-damage mode.
Showing the same visual indicator of the raised sword used on first person model in 3rd person model. Unfortunately, it simply isn't feasible to do*.
Apply a "glinting" effect by applying the enchant glint effect to the class's armor for the duration of the buff (ideally sped up and made more visible). This would offer a way to show that a class is "boosted". Unfortunately, since enchant glint speed can't be tweaked on individual pieces, this would entail:
shifting existing class enchantments (both for boots vote and class stuff) into combination of lore text and attribute modifiers
boosting the enchant glint effect on armor obscenely high with resource pack
dedicating dev time to code glint effect application & removal on the parry class's armor while parrying
as a sort of "shielded" indicator would be a decent solution that offers a distinct visual indicator option distinct from particle spam or visible-through-walls glow.
The big issue with this one is that it would require an afternoon's worth of time invested in converting existing classes & modifying how boots vote gets applied, and that's assuming there's a nice up-to-date source with all the class info and that there don't need to be any debates as to how removing glint from classes makes them look worse. As much as I love this idea from game design perspective, it simply doesn't seem practical to actually implement, especially if the scope of "boosted" classes was increased.
A flawed but practical solution:
This concept is actually two separate solutions combined to help limit their flaws:
Extra-visible particles active for the duration of the ability.
Ideally, would be less transparent and more solid than potion particles
Audible cue to tell people to look out for who's got particles
In the case of parry classes, the parry sound is either incredibly low or inaudible to other players.
In the case of kill-boosted classes, an "execution" sound could be added. Might be challenging to conceptualize and source an appropriate sound that isn't too violent, but would be helpful.
In the case of banner classes, a rallying cry by the appropriate faction would make sense, but honestly, I'd personally prefer a glowing effect on the banner.
In the case of horn classes, the horn sound already suffices
In the case of potion classes, the drinking sound already suffices
*The only way I can think of that might work to have the player arm raise in conjunction with the parry sword would be to borrow the player animation for holding a trident at the ready, but I'm not sure if that's possible even with the dark magic that is having the server just lie to game clients, and it's certainly not an effective allocation of dev time.
