Not just early on. Level cap is 30 so you only get 62 skill points to spend ever. Not counting the possible +2 from Brilliant, but that's a waste of a trait.
Honestly that's the only thing in the game so far that has really stood out to me as a "what the fuck were they thinking?" design decision. There's 12 skills which have 20 ranks each so you basically have to choose 2 of them to max out and then spread the last 22 points around on a few things. You could max 3, but it's not a good idea because that gimps your perk selection too much. The only good thing about them being so stingy with skill points is that it means there's literally no downside to taking Dumb because you don't have the skill points to spread around anyway.
Its not made to spread around; the game does not encourage (IE actively discourages) spreading points around AT ALL. It's a systems that encourages specialization and limiting yourself to 3/4-5 skills per playthrough and to encourage roleplay/replayability. Skyrim it ain't. There is not a single thing lost by not taking Guns or Melee in this game that I can see; You don't need it to fight really well and use all weapons. Now, from what I read, the endgame isn't terribly different but how you get there might be completely different (or the experience of it, how you got there) depending on the skills you took, hacking vs. speech vs. lockpicking vs. brawny. The whole purpose of the first moon is to get to this particular facility "Not a spoiler; they tell you this when you land) So far there are at least 7 different ways I have found via factions/quests etc top accomplish this. All of them relying on a differnt skill(s) to carry you through intermediate quests to find/get help/etc to access this facility.
"Dumb" isn't much of a drawback(choosing 5 skills into which you can never put points) because it opens up some hilarious dialog options plus no one can afford to spread skill points around like that without gimping themselves terribly. I felt so aggrieved by wasting one level of skill points I nearly started over; I went back to the prologue and replayed from there (I had just made level 4 at the time, so about 3+ hours).
One thing I don't see mentioned very often, although a few times, is how little hand holding there is in this game. There are quest markers but lots of time you are on your own for how to do a thing, where that thing is, UI how is a thing done, etc. I missed an instruction for doing a thing and was doing it wrong and not getting a prompt and was totally bewildered. I couldn't find any way to replay the quest instructions, I was just kind of on my own until I figured it out. Awesome and frightening.
Reviewers hyped the new Flaw system; its more of a Meh? system for me, a couple of the suggestions were ok, the rest were ridiculous fodder for your 5 challenge playthrough (Kleptomaniac? you have to steal everything, even when people can see you doing it Bonus- vendors will pay 100% more for stolen items; Yeah I want to be KOS in every town. Will save that for my Serial Killer/Psychopath playthrough).
I'm really digging it, several deliberately attractive women models in game, nothing overtly woke yet, fairly even handed ideologically so far. I am really enjoying it so far; Maybe other moons are samey, mobs are supposedly repetitive, supposedly villain isn't great I have heard, we'll see.
Vorph does, a few here do, I still have mine until Aug 2026) it doesn't hurt to try it. But now you have to pay $29.99 for one month (More in your neck of the woods) and it isn't worth it at all. Like ACG said, I think 80% of the people playing this will drop it like a bad habit before they get off the 1st planet.
