I don’t know exactly what the bug here is, but it’s one out of two. Recipes sold by Karma merchants are now soulbound on acquire; I remember this wasn’t the case right after release, so I guess it was changed. The thing is, the tooltip when buying the recipes from the Karma vendors do not state they are soulbound, which has led me to waste quite a bit of Karma.
So the bug is either:
1) Recipes from Karma merchants are not meant to be soulbound, but are.
OR:
2) Recipes from Karma merchants are meant to be soulbound, but their tooltips are not saying so right now.
Of course, I would prefer if the first option were the correct one, but regardless, something is wrong. For an example, see the “Recipe: Match Grade Standard Rifle” recipe being sold by a Karma Merchant in Kessex Hills.
“I think that players are starting to mature past the point of wanting to be on that
treadmill, of being in that obvious pattern of every time I catch up you are going to
put another carrot in front of me” – Mike O’Brien right before Ascended weapons
