Am I the only one who thinks ligatures and small caps are practically worthless?

In fact, I think they both hurt readability. The few cases where ligatures help, such as "f)" or "To", are better served by kerning pairs (which both Word and Writer supports).

Word and Writer have spent their development effort on things that users care about: being reasonably easy to use. And almost all of the font research of recent years has gone into screen and print readability, not style.