And yes, TNG characters tended to be dull because Roddenberry wanted them to be evolved beyond conflict. Boring!
I think that was one of Roddenberry's biggest mistakes too. That and the we-have-eliminated-the-need-for-personal-possessions nonsense. Picard in particular was a character that was constantly used to voice that view in TNG, while at the same time being fettered to materialistic things such as musical instruments, books, photo albums, and so forth. His acheological interest in historical artefacts and their preservation was another example.
The idea itself wasn't bad - any utopian future would need to do away with capitalistic hierarchies in my opinion - but it quickly becomes a really shallow idea if you can't separate materialistic greed from things with cultural and emotional values. It's for the same reason replicators and the way they were used in TNG and DS9 were a bit too much. So much about things like food and fabric is about nuances. Meals and apparel aren't just practical - they're pleasure, a statement, a creative expression, a unique experience.
They touched upon this briefly in TNG: Homecoming when Picard returned home and his brother refused any replicators near the vineyard, but it was just one small episode out of 176, and Robert Picard himself was portrayed as an eccentric conservative who favoured tradition over development just because. You didn't exactly get the feeling that he made a point that was supposed to last with the viewer beyond the scope of that particular episode.
All of this contributed to a world in TNG that I felt was dull and unappealing. It had a lot of things going for it as far as intelligence, science and humanism were concerned, and these things are intrinsically important to me too. But the TNG future always looked poor and a bit... sad from an individual perspective.
