I'll bring my two cent.
I see alots of mention of taco bandit. But it was honestly the worst gamemode of GW1 for me simply due to how blased it was to plant team,while it was sorta fun for them, it was generally boring to play as a zombie as most of the time you just feel like you're doing nothing useful most of the time. Expect by attempting to get the taco and generally dying because you can't do much with it.
But now that both plant and zombie have both stationary and movable summonable. It could be interesting to have a two-way taco bandit, more like a CTF mode like other game.
As for the balance,like you said, the last patch aren't done much to fix the current problem and even created other one,and thus was rather a step back (rip camo cactus). But even then I still think we're fairly close to fix the OP stuff so that can finally focus at buffing the worst stuff. I mean,current problem in the OP is some citron variant being too strong, Gravity grenade,parrot and possibly Z7 imp and BBQ corn. Once those get (hopefully) fixed,maybe there could be finally a focus for some of the worse alternate abilities,variant as well as some bad upgrade.
For the map, one of the most notifiable change that the new map have is how few there is "safe" and obvious sniping spot now. In one point,it lowered foot soldier dominance which was seriously needed but also kinda hurt cactus viability. Garden center was one of the few map that lacked his problem,which probably explain why is got ported in GW2 and even then,the common sniping spot got a new flanking route which again made them less safe. There also the map in G&G which are overall bigger. But instead moved attacker spawn after capturing a point a bit further and also don't always spawn you in front of the teleporter entrance anymore. All of which make the teleporter seem less useful. Which is imo,a better thing then how mandatory they were in GW1. Capture point in GW2 are also smaller and unlike GW1,generally have next to no cover when inside it. Which probably didn't helped the perception of GW2 being more chaotic then the first one.
As for the old customization stuff in GW1, I can get away with hats and such but I seriously miss the old gestures from GW1,which it not helped by some of them being used for trailer.
I can see them tweaking the old maps to make Snipers less safe and I don't mind that at all. Garden Center does indeed have some fairly minor but important changes that make sniping less lucrative but kept the overall layout largely intact. I like this idea a lot and I hope it bodes well for the old maps. For me it was more about the scenery than anything else and have no issue with some balance tweaks.
Edit: Cacti need to be able to fulfill their role and be fun to play, that needs to be taken into account for map design as well. Captain Deadbeard fills a similar role but due to his nature of dual range firepower is less of an issue.
My zombie team actually won the Taco Bandits game I played in over the weekend. It does favor the defender but I always had a blast with that mode and the theme is highly amusing. A mutual CTF mode like TF2, especially 2-fort where I spent hundreds of hours, would be cool. Perhaps both sides have tacos to defend now? The name alone was good and Dave does love tacos! Zomboss wants to steal Dave's and Dave wants to get his back perhaps?
The teleporters:I can see your point. I never want to play a game where a certain class is absolutely required for your team (Rose/Engineer in this case) but they should be useful and desired. Finding that middle ground is not so easy. Too far one way they become essential, the other way and they're useless. In Overwatch you almost always see Mercy on a team and if not her Lucio, although Mercy seems to be almost required by the competitive crowd.
And yes, the gestures I especially miss as well. We have so few in GW2 and so many old good ones we need back!
