My paladin is now level 4 and has 19 strength and 15 charisma. I know it is probably better to take the ability score increase and get another +1 on the majority of rolls I'll be making but that's just so boring!
I'm taking Shield Master instead.
Does anyone else have this conflict?
Most people seem to be misunderstanding. 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.