It’s a very anti-fun design decision. But then again, feats are an optional rule for some reason so it would be hard to have it a different way.

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I don’t mind having to make “tough choices” in general, only when the obviously correct choice is boring and the suboptimal one is the cool fun one.

This perfectly sums it up. The problem is that increasing your scores needs to be pretty darn strong, strong enough to compete with a feat…but as you said, it’s usually pretty boring. A couple of +1s certainly add up and make your character more powerful on average, but a feat that grants entirely new functionality just feels so much more impactful and fun.

I would have preferred them to entirely separate stat growth and feat selection, but the OneDnD method of just making most (all?) feats into “half feats” is acceptable as well.

I think feats are one of the coolest aspects of D&D character customization, so it’s always a pain when it’s stifled in favor of number-go-up. Depending on how high I plan to go, I give my players a feat every level or every other level. They end up with more than they know what to do with and end up taking RP feats, which are sorely underutilized because of the opportunity cost of obtaining them.

Yes, the PCs get more powerful, but that just means I rebalance enemies.

I hate how rarely you get ASI’s and feats. Plus with the reliance on half feats, it’s so much work to figure out what to do. I think that all feats should change to half feats, lose the built in ASI, and then every even level you get a choice of a +1 in a stat of your choice or one of these ASI-less half feats.

although with a 19 you should definitely look into the half feats