Diablo 3 wishlist, mood, colors, look..

[Citizen]

Hello, well after looking at the high res video gameplay of diablo 3, as many here have done so.. i couldn't help but notice i might add the drastic shift of change in mood colors and lack of gothic style that is currently present in the new diablo .. the old sprites and 2d view is what gave diablo 1 and even diablo 2 a sense of claustrophobic dense atmosphere, i remember how freaky it got with the butcher chasin my character for the first time, you look at that guy and you might say thats one mean lookin daemon who means business, blizzard is by far my favourite games company and has inspired me in endless ways with their flawless design and artdirection and games. and diablo being one of my very favourite of blizzard games i only hope they will play with the mood and textures and make the monsters look more tense and " evil " , i cant help but thinking its WOW in an isometric form. it just my personal opinion but if they can add more dirt on the materials as well as decrease saturation and increase contrast, add a post process filter only just slightly of monochrome noise overall to give it a painting feel will be a good start i would certainly decrease the brightness level on the characters and make their textures look more like sketches drawn on paper but applied on the skin, i also thought that the health bars on the minions are too big and distracting and takes away form the action makes it more look like an arcade game. i quickly eidited an image form the gameplay preview maybe you guys can get an idea .. cheers : )
link:

http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/3618/badiablocopyjk3.jpg

[Nebulus]

I think the background needs to be dark especially inside catacombs, cathedrals, and in hell. Outdoors I think colors are fine the way blizzard have them in D3 so far.
But your character and monsters should stand out and remain colorful. That's especially the case for your character, less so for monsters- if monsters have a similar gradient of colors it helps us differentiate players from monsters (it will depend on the type of monster).
If you look at Chaos Sanctuary the background was very dark and only had like one shade of dark gray. But there is still plenty of color and they really do look nice.
Here's a video of chaos sanctuary: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8760743278133099279

The colors serve as identifiers for the player to better recognize what is happening on the playing field. the brighter and more varied the colors are the easier it is for us to see whether or not our enemy is frozen, struck and poisoned... and whether we are on fire, poisoned, cursed etc...
The colors help guide the eye as to what is happening on the playing field. If everything one washed out we'd have difficulty understanding what's happening.

What I find interesting is how cool bright colors look on a dark backdrop, and how it really gives a scary, gore-like atmosphere.

I also think the player's light radius should play a equivalent role in diablo 3. It's really scary when you can't see much pass your light radius. I also think the devs should work more with lighting. I don't mind colors but they need to be near light sources. Areas that aren't illuminated should remain dark/less colorful.

Overall colors should have a huge presence in spells.

[Ballstone]

There's an overall softness to everything. Rocks and stone walls should have a rough, sharp hard feel.
I also miss the deep impenetrable blackness. (from what I've seen so far)

[Kaeros]

LOL, that video really made me remember just how much Teleport breaks the game.

I agree that things could look a little grittier and more jagged, but I disagree that the colors are too bright and the lighting too unrealistic. If they can pull off an evil, immersive look with more interesting colors, I'd rather them do that than do it in dark, de-saturated tones. After all, I will be staring at this game for days straight after it comes out .. the more interesting the look, the better.

I'd say dirty up the environment with more doodads, corpses, rubble, and actual dirt.

[NotAgain]

I personally don't like the critical hit Numbers appearing above a damaged monster, this feature should be WoW only.