You're free to adjust the games leveling curve to suit your needs. You can adjust experience gained in the games own menu, or you can edit the XML's to adjust the rate at which it increases per level, the base amount of XP required per level, or even the number of skill points rewarded for each level. What has been removed is any specific "must be level [x] to unlock this perk" requirement, and that does allow the player much more freedom to spec as they want, and with the ability to very simply modify the game, the speed at which they can spec.
To be fair, by that same token, you could've easily modded out the level requirements before, decreased experience, knocked the leveling progression up from 1.0149 to 1.05, etc. etc.
Essentially, the same argument you have for me, the exact inverse would've given you the A18 progression experience that you appear to be supporting? I say that to make a point that I hope you can agree with, "Moddability doesn't excuse poor balancing or design".
Yet you're telling me to do just that.
As for adjusting the exp itself - I may in time, but truthfully, if you look at how quickly the exp requirements scale - even increasing XP - once you hit even mid game, the current "per level" gain rapidly outpaces what even the options can make up for.
As an example:
By level 30, you need 49% more exp than you did in A17.
By level 40, you need 87% more exp than you did in A17.
By level 50, you need 138% more exp than you did in A17.
So, you can see that, even boosting exp to 200%, by level 50, that's already substantially lower than what you need to compensate for the slower progression. You'd still take longer reaching Level 50, than you would with only 100% exp in A17.
Consider that some things take such a significant amount of points to unlock. I.E. unlocking the Junk turret takes 7. Unlocking first-aid bandages (I believe) takes 8. Unlocking a supply of meat stew (farming & cooking) takes about 15. That's not including other "basic" skills that people tend to level up - healing factor, miner, loot, cardio, pain tolerance, their weapon skill, etc. Now, consider that level 8 is the magic level where you actually start requiring more exp than you did in A17, and I think you can start to see how, if you want to develop an interesting character instead of just letting RNGeezus grab you by the nuts and drag you where it wants, you can fairly quickly become more chained and restricted by this system, than you were by the leveling system in A17.
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I answered nothing, If you check again you can see my response was a question, which you failed to answer.
You specifically listed schematics as an alternative to the 14 skill points required. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt that, you were intending to give a sarcastic answer, than to have to accept that you're actually that clueless.
Of course there are things I dislike, but I figure some mods will iron things out for me.