This is something that’s been an issue for a long time. This isn’t a critique of the design themselves – in fact, the whole reason I consider this a major issue is because a lot of the armor designs are SO good, I feel like the simple color-schemes undermine them!
For example, the new Headless Horseman stuff that Wowhead just posted:
I love the overall designs at play here!
The problem is, those color schemes are just SO bog-standard, plain-jane, they don’t really allow the individual items to have a real sense of identity.
The original Headless Horsemen has green fire, yes, but it also has a pretty stark contrast between copper and purple-steel armor, which gives it an even mix of three different colors.
The “green” weapon and shield weapon and shield echo that beautifully; they have so much color, but also a color scheme that give them a real sense of identity.
But the armor and mounts? They can all easily be summed up with a single color. “Blue, red, yellow, green”. There’s no nuance, no complexity, And this isn’t just these sets; it also extends to almost all of the Tier-sets for the past couple of years, too.
Sometimes, you’ll get a single version that feels like “the real one” that has the sort of complexity we love to see in those iconic sets (such as the “Mythic” Paladin tier set for this next patch – that set goes so hard), but I feel like the one-note “recolors” often detract from any individual identity for any of the sets they’re supposed to be representing.
Case in point:
Look at the Paladin’s T2 set, the Judgement Armor, arguably the single most iconic set in the game. What “color” would you describe that as? You really wouldn’t be able to, right? It’s got red, gold, and black all in equal measure, it gives the set a very distinctive “look” that is instantly recognizable from any other set in the game.
The whole relatively true of the T2 remaster from last year, although the colors do feel a lot more subdued.
But then you look at the “Red” version from the Diablo event, and it just looks impossibly bland. And the same applies to literally every single one of those sets; they just feel like you just applied a single main color to everything, and maybe an accent color.
Again, I bring this up as an issue because I think the armor designs in the past few years have been absolutely killing it. But these extremely simple color schemes just take away from what are otherwise very cool sets.
For my part, I would say that all of the PvE versions and the PvP versions of each set should share the same overall color scheme. For PvE, maybe the LFR version is the “baseline” version minus any particle effects, Normal is the same but includes particle effects, Heroic has a more amped-up version of the armor minus particle effects (or just the same “subtle” effects as the Normal), and Mythic is the amped-up version with particle effects.
For PvP, you would essentially just have “Normal” and “Mythic” versions, just in a single other color scheme.
That way, each set still maintains a visual identity, and the different versions simply build off of one another. By limiting yourself to two color-schemes, instead of spreading yourself too thin with six color schemes, it would probably give the artists a lot more room to make truly interesting, recognizable color schemes for these set they obviously put a ton of work into.
But more than that, by changing the entire approach to armor designs, it would likely change the result as well, with us getting more nuanced, interesting designs in the process.
Just something I would really like to urge the team to consider as we eventually move into Midnight, that “less is more” when it comes to having fewer, but more meaningful coloration for these amazing armor sets.