Like playing poker with open cards.

Gallifray is right..

showing a DGs inventory or manna suply would ruin some of the finest parts of PvP. you don't know what ur foe is planning to do. that keeps you thinking, even after attacking a foe. you have to anticipate on their moves. to make the link with chess. You do know what your foe could do, but you can never be sure what he will do..

In demigod it's just the same. A demigod could be having a HP pot, but you can only be sure if he uses it. and you can only guess what kinda armor he weares. knowing what, for example, kinda gloves a DG wears can be gameruining.. for example, you wouldn't engage a rook with slayers gloves, duelist carras and full upgrades god's strenght, unless you know you can withstand the insane dmg and crit chance... if you don't know, its a suprise each time you make a move, keeping the game dynamic and fun.

You have not convinced me said mechanic is worth saving and is good for the game.  Just because it is there does not mean it is good.

You need to play more card games, or just games in general.  There's plenty of games where both players know much about the states of the other players involved.  And amazingly, these games not only do not suck, but are extremely strategic!

The analogy to "poker with open cards" is nonsense.  Do you have to micro your cards when you go all in after the flop, and run away if you see the flush coming?  Attack the low cards before you can take on the Kings and Queens?  This game is not nearly so simple.

You assume they wanted to.  The feature is only NOT in Demigod because according to the main devs it wasn't already part of the engine and would have required work, and since they just didn't care strongly either way they left it as it was and moved on to other work.  There was no grand design and strategic planning in whether or not you could see opponent items - it just kinda happened by default (same as Warcraft 3's engine too)

This thread has really great suggestions!

I'd like to add one (which may or may not be in patch 1.1 ...the wording was a bit ambiguous in the notes):

11. Have the chat history permanently displayed on the screen.

And I'm saying that an analogy to poker is massively flawed.  In backgammon you don't put your hands over your side of the board and hide it.  There's plenty of games where all players can see everything, and many where they cannot.  And Demigod isn't any of those games, so comparisons between them are tenuous at best.

There's a few games where you CAN make direct comparisons of this game with that are actually viable.  The main one is Dota.

It should definitely be a little less clunky than it is right now.  If you're typing something and you click off it should not break your typing window.  You should just be able to keep typing as you were.