Keep the system how it is, but make people pay consecutively more for heirlooms past gen10 (and nothing for the heirlooms before that). Maybe make it easier to retire to gen10, but whatever, the heirlooms are free to that point. 9 looms is a perfect number for free; you either do a couple of different weapons you like, a weapon and some armor, etc.
If players can then trade heirlooms or purchase them from each other for gold, high gen, retire all day errday players like myself can hock their old, boring heirlooms to pay for their new ones. This also works to the advantage of the gen1 forever crowd, who likely has much gold in reserve to purchase heirloomed items. This would introduce an interesting player economy for heirloomed items. Furthermore, retirement options for those above gen 10 could be,
retire with nothing (level 15)
retire for a xp bonus (31)
retire for an xp bonus and heirloom (31, some increasing amount of gold for every heirloom past the first 9)
The whole fun of having a stupid xp bonus is being able to rock out a new build for a while, getting to 31 and then trying something new. The current post 30 curve pretty much stops people from getting past 35, so it's not like kesh is going to make it back to level 50 and troll the world with 13 athletics and 500 effective wpf.
