1) You faiped to read the posts so I'll say it once again. Rituals can be obtained with a simple feat: "ritual caster". This line of thought of yours is useless.
2) As I said in earlier thread, I was not seeing many sorcerers until I applied two fixes of my own. Sorcery points bonus for charisma and one more known spell for charisma bonus with the bonus equal to one spell of the corresponding level. This has done wonders without balance issues.
3) As for the simulations. We used four scenari. Attack on lich lair. Assault on the efreet strong hold, The warlord and Githyanky for the ride. All are high level adventures that can be done in an evening about three or four hours of game time.
The players know these scenari well and know that they are test material for rule and balance checking. We have premade characters of appropiate levels with basic magic items and the expected spell list/known for a character of that level (13, 15 17 and 20) With the wizard, the difficulty is acceptable. With the sorcerer, the difficulty goes down the drain. Given the expected prep time, it means that the sorcerer will not only be able to change any "useless" spell for the task at hand, but will also be absolutely certain to get the best spell his list allow. This is not the case of the wizard as if the spell is not in his spellbook, too bad.
After the tests, the players looked at me and asked if I would really implement this rule. I said no. The sorcerer player told me it was a good thing as it was making him way to powerful.
This boost the warlock too but to a smaller degree.
You assume that we make these test blindly without careful thinking. We have been playing together for 37 years in some cases and well above 30 for the others. We are not novices in playtesting.
Question, which spells were switched?