I think the old, floating tentacles were much more interesting than these.
the old ones had a nice spiraling curve that led the eye swiftly towards the well detailed head, new legs are shabilly drawn and have a bunch of curves that dont really lead the eye anywhere, they are only distracting. Not only that but they dont fit the anatomy of the head in the least, they have senseless varying widths that wouldnt be reasonable in any kind of functional tentacle system, the wobbly varying depth also clashes with the delicate details on the squid's head which just makes it seem like 2 diferent images frankestenized together.
I know from what you have said that the new legs are supposed to be adapted to perspective, but the wild varying widths in them cannot be determined by any true sense of perspective, I also notice that they touch ground on two diferent levels and in that sense you could say they have 2 layers of depth, but this is only supported by the shadow you added and the shading you gave them, whitout that they just look like the wobbly badly defined limbs that they are.
if you really need the legs to look like they are on the ground so badly, you could just select a few of the old tentacles and move them up a little bit, have some of the tips bend harshly at a given height and give the viewer a sense of the creature standing.
http://www.newwavemugen.com/MVC2/ShumaGorath.rar here's a spritepack of an octopus creature that pulls of very well the illusion of standing, while still having beliveable tentacles, it's an archive of all the frames this fighter character has.
everyone, what's with the lack of depth in the discussion going on here? half of you expressed your disagreement with the change of the legs but none of you bothered to sit down and really break down what specifical aspects of it detracted from the piece, when did everyone become so afraid of doing good old C&C?