Yeah, iirc the ferangi were supposed to be the main threat like the klingons were in tos, but they were just so goofy or something they quickly got relegated to a 'comic' relief race. i say 'comic' because they are more groan inducing than funny, but they do have some neat moments (mainly with quark on ds9).
Give them a few years to get into their roles, and things will definitely improve, not that quality acting is particularly necessary for a show containing high concepts over character depth. Picard rarely will disappoint, nor will Data. The rest of the crew varies more.
Keep at it, because they don't quite make shows that have this level of intelligence put into them these days.
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There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out