The premise I'm working off of here is that powerful magic is prevalent in our world. This means that during the course of any given character's life they will interact with the same enchantments over and over again. From this point forward it depends on how we are imagining enchantments from a flavor perspective.
Since we have discernable game effects from enchantments (crits appearing, an increase in the protection shown by the 'protection <limb>' command, required % wield displayed when looking at a weapon) we can either assume that:
1) Characters can not determine any difference between an unenchanted item and an enchanted one
OR
b) Characters all have some level of affinity for magic, including non-magic guilds
OR
3) Magic interacts differently with different guilds
It should be clear from the fact that any character can see required wields, any character can tell the difference between two identical armour pieces with different enchantments, and damage types showing up when fighting that 1) is debunked entirely. It's still a valid way to approach magic in a fantasy setting, but it's not how we at Darke envision it.
For the same reasons I am touting option b) as the way we should be treating enchantments. There is little real benefit beyond forcing non-magic guilds to get someone with detect magic to look at items for them (which is not to discount the usefulness of player interaction) in deciding that different guilds interact with enchantments differently.
Further, I would be all for enchantments that have some innate "feel" to them, for scalability within identification. For instance, if flame blade's added aspects of fire to a weapon we could have messages depending on WHO looked at the item. For instance:
Levels 1-10 - An unidentifiable warmth radiates from this weapon.
Levels 11-20 - Flames seem to wreath this weapon.
Levels 20+ - <flame strength> fires burn in this weapon.
What this would accomplish for guilds who don't have detect magic is allowing anyone who plays to tell the basics of what a weapon might do while avoiding telling those without detect magic the exact names or strengths of the enchantment(s) present.
The system we currently have is number 3) I've listed. There doesn't seem to be much beyond the status quo in support of this way of doing things, but I'm just one person. Would anyone care to voice their opinion?
As an aside, spell sense is easily one of the more useful extras a character can have while detect magic does suffer from exactly what Sabu said originally - at 10% I can look at an item 100 times in a minute and see everything on it, so there's no difference between that and looking at it one time with 200%.
