EDIT: Dunno why its posting on my classic character but this is meant for Midnight professions
Hard capping engineering unless you spend 10 points in recycling without making that ABUNDANTLY CLEAR is a horrible experience. Even looking through these forums I see people spending tens of thousands of materials learning nothing because the game is not clear at all about what is required. The 10 point node says it allows you to unlock “whimsical recipes”, which at a glance would make one assume you could get toys and silly engi things. It does not make me think “literally all engineering recipes”. Learning the armor recipes says “Recycling” as their source. It does not say “Recycling - 10” to show you its required to have that 10 point node.
Thankfully I did not get caught by it, but not because it was clear, but because I went for recycling because it gives an absurd amount of skill to everything else. I didn’t do it for the recipes. But I know of people that got caught in this trap and spent tens of thousands of gold wasted on materials for this. Just searching on this forum I see some spending upwards of 200k because of this nonsense.
Even IF it was PERFECTLY clear that engineering was hard capped by this node, its still just bad design. Literally shutting the whole profession down unless you spend 10 points in some random tree is horrible design. No other profession works this way. I mean, us engineers have come to have SUPER low expectations for our profession at this point but holy HELL this is way worse than anything else before.
I’d imagine people that caught by this and didn’t even UNLOCK the recycling specialization at all, would be soft capped at 70 skill because their isn’t anything beyond hyper-expensive recipes (or spark required ones) that goes beyond 70 that you learn without recycling, and it would require 75 skill to actually unlock the recycling tree to be able to move forward with the profession (that is if they even figure out that that is what is holding them back, if not they are just capped at a very low level).