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Wizard by default are the academic/scholarly magicians.
They are casters who have to prepare ahead of time for things, since they primarily use Vancian methodology for their spells. (or use items to supplement their immediate flexibility to access un-memorized spells)
They are the masters of the long term flexibility and reliance on the great and nightly spellbook. Always going back to the spellbook to make changes.
Sorcerers instead of having their magic by nature of study, borne out of a relationship with vast knowledge and a tome of magic, they are instead imbued with magic as if a gift from their heritage, some boon of some power, or maybe the result of some wild experiment or accident that caused magic to take hold of them. They may have since chosen to study aspects of magic due to what has emerged from them, but the magic isn't from their study, it is the other way around.
They are spontaneous casters, they don't make a list every day of what specific spells they are going to cast and how many times. In fact the list of spells they case are clearly and strictly limited. They don't have anywhere near the same long term, wide flexibility that a prepared caster has. They choose their limited list of spells, and that is it barring advancement, and the potential of allowing retraining to swaps some spells out, which outside of advancement would require downtime, instead of preparation time.
Within any particular encounter is when a sorcerer has a slight bit more short term flexibility than a prepared caster. They can cast any of their spells as many times as they have that level of spell slot, they don't have to stick to a predetermined quantity. This is an advantage, but the very limited spells known counteracts that significantly since they have flexibility limited to that small scope.
Lets look at the updates recently to these two classes.
Allowing the Wizard to re-prepare an unused spell slot with a new spell with quick preparation out of combat encounters is being hailed as steeling a sorcerer's thunder. I'd argue it is not. The biggest part of the sorcerer's niche involve their flexibility within an individual encounter. A Wizard returning to study his spellbook, or even literally going over to their spell book and casting the spell as they look over the book fits fine with the niche. It would even be an expected Trope, or scene, if you ask me for the iconic wizard.
Wizards, combining spell slots to make more powerful spell slots, no I don't see that as really being something that rote memorization and schooling will give them. I don't think it fits, and so I don't think they need it. If anything it fits with the flexibility/power of a sorcerer.
Sorcerer's strengths should be using the things they know to their advantage as if they are experts of those spells. Applying metamagics to them on the fly is something that would fit into the niche of what a sorcerer would find much easier to do than a wizard.
People are really hung up on the fact that a wizard gets to in their view auto-heighten all their spells and a sorcerer only gets to do it to a limited number, and they feel that is unfair. This made the limitation of heightening of select spells that sorceress have as not only seen as a bad ability, but actually seen as an arbitrary limitation, not a useful ability.
Honestly, I recognize it really is two different things since the prepared caster has to prepare each spell at set level, so it isn't really the same thing to compare. However, let us be honest. A really easy solution exists, that doesn't really 'Break' things seriously. It is take away the Wizard's 'automatic' learning of heightened versions of spells. When the wizard gains a level, and gains access to a new level, that has spells that qualify for heightened version which can fill that slot. Let the Wizard spend downtime and roll once to see if they unlock the necessary knowledge to 'know' that level version of that spell. If they fail, they wait until they go up in level again, of they spend one of their free spell known, or they get a permanent boost to the intelligence and can try again. Since they know an earlier version, I'd say give them a conditional bonus to learn it, but don't make it automatic.
If they succeeded at the check, they write in a page of magical notes relating to the spell for each spell level the heightening costs. This way a 1st level spell takes one page in a spellbook. A 1st level spell, that the mage learned a 3rd level heightened version will need the first spell and its one page, and the two pages further back, in order to total the three pages that make up the knowledge of the third level version of the original spell. Otherwise there is almost an argument that can be made that a 9th level spell, that is a heightened version of a 1st level spell may only require one page in their spell book to learn the 9th level version.
Again, please consider giving the ability you targeted to give the wizards, to trade in lower level slots to replenish higher level slots to sorcerer instead. I think it would make more sense, thematically, and would give them a needed boost.
Make the sorcerer's spontaneous heightening ability something they can reassign to different spells in the same 10 minute rest that the wizard would be able to swap a spell memorized in. Potentially, in addition to the two spells they get to choose for spontaneous heightening, consider as a baseline ability to let them pick one more spell, but have it be limited to one of their chosen bloodline spells.
Also, strongly consider giving sorcerer knowledge of additional cantrips as they advance in levels. (I don't know if they should start out with one more, or the same as a wizard) But probably would get a new one every two or four class levels, making a guess.
Bloodline spells, instead of each bloodline having one spell of each level, have the bloodline list at least two of each level. The sorcerer gets to pick ONE of the pair of spells to have as their bloodline spell. This requires identifying some extra spells for each bloodline but would leave a little more variance between sorcerers of any one bloodline.
Another thing, consider having them, as they level up, on perhaps even levels, have them learn one additional spell of the level one below their max spell level. (perhaps second and every four levels after it, they might learn a new cantrip) This would give the sorcerers a very slight boost in spells known, but leave it still far below what wizards will have in raw versatility but give them enough breadth to make their spontaneous casting versatile enough to give them a reasonable advantage in some encounters over the wizards utility belt breadth.
And yes, certainly make sure the sorcerers' bloodline powers interesting.
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I agree on Quick Preparation: it's a perfect Wizard baseline ability.
I also think that the combination of spell slots belongs more to the Sorcerer.
I'm against your proposal of making the Wizard learn spells at each heightened level. First, it increases bookkeeping; second, we are not looking at a way to complicate a Wizard's life, I would rather make the Sorcerer's one a bit easier.
About spontaneous heightening, can't Sorcerers already do it on the fly (twice a day)? I don't have the playtest pdf here, if they really don't they should just be allowed to.
Having some choice on bloodline spells would be good, but not strictly necessary (domains should have the same treatment, in case).
I'm against giving Sorcerers more spells known; I would rather give them more slots instead.
Of course bloodline powers (and school powers, and domain powers too) should be rebalanced.
If Focus makes it to the final rules, instead of the 2 free heightenings a Sorcerer has got, I would give it a baseline +2 Focus and let they use Focus to auto-highten a spell: with their high CHA it gives them much more versatility, but since that competes with other abilities it doesn't force them to choose any heighten-able spells.
Spontaneous Heightening has to be planned and set during your daily preparations, you don't get to do it on the fly. It isn't a 2 times a day thing it is a once a day you specify two spells that you will know at all available heightened levels for that day. This ability is really what made people resent the fact that Wizards only learn a spell once, and sorcerers have to learn it multiple times, or use a class ability to access the extra versions of a spell. Worse, it was an ability with the name Spontaneous that was hard set during your once a day preparations.
Really, the argument is that different heightened instances of spells are actually different spells within a family of spells, so if that is the case, why does a wizard who the whole concept of Vancian casting involves a sort of Rote memorization, or embedding of a very specific magical pattern in their mind, why would that pattern be exactly the same for a wizard, but absolutely different for a sorcerer? By making them Different Spells, in the same family, you treat them all like separate spells, be they Wizard, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Sorcerer. Heightened versions of spells are most simply different spells. Allow there to be a conditional bonus, similar to an aid other, to reflect a familiarity with the family so that learning another gets easier after you know your first one in the family.
My point is, doing that solves so much. You say it is more book keeping for the wizard. But it is book keeping you are willing to hold over the head of a sorcerer, why does a wizard get a pass on it? Especially, when it makes more sense for that sort of bookkeeping to be on the side of a wizard, than on the sorcerer?
Leave the spontaneous heighten as being limited to 2 spells, but allow them to spend the same time a wizard would change a spell slot, to change the focus of their 'spells known' to allow them to heighten different spells.
Although from a balance standpoint, I think they could use another spell known over time. It is admittedly really bit of a guess for better balancing. It really would be easy to add after the fact as a house rule, so of the changes it is admittedly pretty speculative.
(edit) I'm kind of against sorcerers getting many more active slots, although giving them an ability that would allow them to rest and refocus an recover a few reserve slots to free up used slots would be reasonable. I don't think the sorcerer should be able to last longer in a day, but not necessarily go Nova more in a single encounter.
I really miss some bloodlines (like draconic) getting +1/damage dice for their related element. And especially the Bloodline Mutation that gave +1/damage dice for evocation spells at the cost of School Focus & a bloodline ability. Don't know how unbalancing something similar would be.
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About spontaneous heightening, can't Sorcerers already do it on the fly (twice a day)? I don't have the playtest pdf here, if they really don't they should just be allowed to.
They pick two spells every morning that they can freely cast out of any spell slot. They can never increase this number (excepting the 10th level feat that gives them all of their bloodline spells as well, which is a mixed bag depending on the spells granted by the bloodline). Bards can eventually spont-heighten 5 chosen spells. Otherwise sorcerers are locked in to whatever level they learned the spell at.
Wizards meanwhile can prep any spell they know in any slot any day for free and can even change things up with a 10 minute break.
About spontaneous heightening, can't Sorcerers already do it on the fly (twice a day)? I don't have the playtest pdf here, if they really don't they should just be allowed to.They pick two spells every morning that they can freely cast out of any spell slot. They can never increase this number (excepting the 10th level feat that gives them all of their bloodline spells as well, which is a mixed bag depending on the spells granted by the bloodline). Bards can eventually spont-heighten 5 chosen spells. Otherwise sorcerers are locked in to whatever level they learned the spell at.
Wizards meanwhile can prep any spell they know in any slot any day for free and can even change things up with a 10 minute break.
To be fair, an occult sorcerer can get 5 spontaneous heightens, just at level 18 vs the Bard's level 8, and does it through multiclassing into Bard. It's still odd to realize that the former jack-of-all-trades class is now better at spontaneous casting for most of its career than the class defined by spontaneous casting.
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I don’t even get why anyone is surprised anymore Wizards will always be better because people basically demand it, hell the wizard literally got buffed because it wasn’t interesting not even because it was weaker, it honestly just seems like the sorcerer was designed to fail it’s got access to any spell list but the parent classes are almost always better, even their bloodline abilities don’t help much since they range from mediocre to just bad, who knows maybe they’ll turn out fine but from everything shown the sorcerer is gonna be the runt of the litter who got torn down because it dared to try and be relevant.