As a "fan" of WW2, i don't care about fantasy decals at all. I'm all about historical resemblance.
As it is with most of the vehicle skins, they are historically inaccurate and in some cases sloppy made. For instance: There is not one proper "Hinterhalttarnung" for german tanks - they either have wrong colours, wrong shapes or are trying to be too "artistic".
Then they put vehicle trimmings and decals in the brightest colours imaginable on top of it. It's there to differentiate between players, i'm aware, but there isn't even the option or mods allowed to disable it, which leads me to:
My WW2 fetish in terms of vehicle skins and decals is in no way satisfied.
This isn't SC2. I don't care about cool looking skulls, pierced hearts or other "totally rad" stuff that i can only imagine is to come.
If you wan't to make cosmetic items that i want to buy, you have to put some effort and research into it. Things like:
-camouflage nettings, foliage
-sandbags and other makeshift armour upgrades (e.g. bedspring sideskirts for t34s)
-proper cyrillic writings on russian tanks
-nation flags on the back of tanks (as in real flag and not a texture)
-zimmerit on german tanks
-kill rings on german tank barrels
-real unit numbers and symbols (don't just write SDKFZ in bold letters on a tank, that's nonsense)
-nicknames such as "Anneliese" or "Fury"
-battle worn look, with lots of bullet scratches and deflected tank shells (please, no silly bloodsplatters)
I would buy THE SHIT out of that.
That said, gameplay comes before graphics. And the gameplay is arguably in much more dire needs.
While I most heartily agree with pretty much everything you have said here, especially your list, I would buy the shit out of that stuff too. I fear that Relic is not trying to build something with this kind of accuracy. I fear whether anything like this will ever come out of Relic's studios.
Before they stopped us from modding, myself and a few others were going mad with ideas of this sort and began to actually gain some progress into recreating a number of things you have on your list, plus many many more. I personally strived to get camo netting on open topped vehicles to work and look good, yet in it infancy we were shut down and no progress has gone on since.
While I agree that balance is pretty much the backbone of ANY multiplayer game, some people forget that there are those out there that would like to see things a little more visually polished or more historically accurate (even forsake of balance).
We can all dream, we can all pray, but in the end we get what they give us. Such a shame, hopefully they can give as many of us as possible what we want, cause god know they can't make everybody happy.