Heros vs. Characters...Fundamental difference?

With the devs working on GW2, I thought it might be a good time to bring this up...
So, you've got heroes. They're essentially customizable any way you see fit. You can tailor their skills any way you want. The only thing (lamentably) missing is the ability to tailor their appearance. Why is that? Other than a handful of advanced armor skins, you really can't do much to change the way they look. Seems like a waste to me. Cripes, you can't even dye their armor. I can't imagine it would be too difficult to allow you to pick armors for your heroes.
Now take it one step further...
If hero's skills and weapons are fully customizable, why not allow us to create our own teams? Actually use those characters we have at the same time? Does'nt seem like it would give anyone an unfair advantage. (Of course, I don't know if the game engine could support such a thing...I'm guess that currently, it can't. Other wise they'ld implement such a seemingly wonderful thing.)
Thoughts? Opinions?

Yes, I'd love to be able to dye Jin's and Souske's armors. The others I can live with; Margrid and MoW have especially nice kit.

I think the reason they prob did it this way is so that heroes can be easily distinguished from real players. Can cause a bit of confusion, though, when you have more than one on the same team - "is that your Dunk or mine?"

Are you asking to use other pve characters from your account as heroes? It sounds interesting, but more than a little unfair. In essence, you could play through the game with four characters at a time. Any replay value that pve might still have would disappear down the drain rather quickly.

It is, indeed, the idea I am proposing. I don't see how it would be any different than running through the game with heroes. (which is pretty much what I've been doing for the last few weeks). The difference would be that you can completely customize the appearance (and name) of each person in your team.
If anything, I think it would make the game more fun. I've read that there are quite a few people who've grown board with the game after running just a few characters through it. If anything, I imagine that ANet would profit from selling more char. slots so that people could make a variety of teams.

Only if your other toons are only treated as heroes to a certain extent. Meaning they take their portion of drops and gold, as well as their portion of experience from your party, however, none of this actually applies to their inventory or experience bar. Basically, you'll end up playing with a copy of your toon, rather than the actual one.

Also, they need to make it where you can only use one that has been in the area you're currently questing in.