Resetting the "Recent places" in "save as" dialog to default
With El Capitan 10.11.6, here's the output from defaults read .GlobalPreferences NSNavRecentPlaces on my system.


(
    "~/Desktop/news",
    "~/Documents/text",
    "~/Documents/text/news",
    "~/Documents/astronomy",
    "/Volumes/Video"
)


Try defaults write .GlobalPreferences NSNavRecentPlaces -array /Applications to restore a value for the NSNavRecentPlaces key.

There is no NSNavRecentPlacesLimit key in .GlobalPreferences for El Capitan on my system. The following list of keys are part of the output from defaults find NSNav which is a long list. I assume these are the default settings. Here are the NSNav keys:


Found 9 keys in domain 'Apple Global Domain': {
    NSNavPanelFileLastListModeForOpenModeKey = 2;
    NSNavPanelFileLastListModeForSaveModeKey = 2;
    NSNavPanelFileListModeForOpenMode2 = 2;
    NSNavPanelFileListModeForSaveMode2 = 2;
    NSNavPanelSidebarKeyForOpen =     (
    );
    NSNavPanelSidebarKeyForSave =     (
    );
    NSNavRecentPlaces =     (
        "~/Desktop/news",
        "~/Documents/text",
        "~/Documents/text/news",
        "~/Documents/astronmy",
        "/Volumes/Video"
    );
    NSNavSortOrder =     (
        NSNavDisplayNameFileProperty,
        1
    );
    "NSNavSortOrder_10.6" =     (
        displayName,
        1
    );
}


Try defaults delete .GlobalPreferences NSNavRecentPlacesLimit to remove the key you added. The discussions article seems to be about OS X versions before El Capitan and may not be relevant or useful with OS 10.11.