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.

I’m not a fan. But I need to stop playing D&D because, among other reasons, I find class+level too coarsely grained. I’d rather be able to spend xp directly on stuff like in cofd, fate, many other games I know less well.

That is exactly the reason I allways play songle Ability characters. I just dont have room for ASI. All the int increase on my wizard comes from half feats.

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.

5e is weirdly stingy with ASIs and feats. It is kinda weird

I feel it provides a decent balance, making you choose between raw ability and specialization

i’ve personally (as DM) let players have both a feat and an ASI at the appropriate levels. Honestly doesn’t hurt balance that much overall, just makes for slightly more powerful PCs.