Maybe I wasn't clear enough, my bad! I basically mean taking painting principles and applying them in-game.
Just grabbed an image from the net to show what I mean - as you can see on the left you get muddy-looking tones when a skin tone is simply darkened (APB equivalent adding semi-transparent black or grey) vs. when a hue differential is added between highlights, midtones and shadows on the right giving more life / depth (in APB, making the semi-transparent layer(s) slightly saturated in a shifted hue):
I could hop in-game to make an example if you want but I hope the idea comes across from this. At the end of the day it's all down to personal preference, though, of course.