Hey Michael!
Thanks for the great question. It's something I hear pop up from designers on a semi-regular basis.
The sentiment that design systems cripple creativity reminds me of similar moaning that responsive design is all boxes and grids and is therefore sucking the soul out of web design. Of course this is a load of garbage and we've seen some extremely beautiful, creative responsive designs crop up over the years.
The same holds true for pattern-based design and development. Is it possible to create a boring, sterile, and boxy design system? Of course! Does that happen a lot? It sure does! But is that the fault of pattern libraries? Absolutely not. I'm reminded of Tim Kadlec's wonderful article, Blame The Implementation Not The Technique: timkadlec.com/2012/10/blame-the-implementation-no… Creating well-crafted UI patterns that are versatile and interesting takes time and talent and effort, so let's roll up our sleeves and create beautiful
What a pattern-based approach to design does do is free up designers to focus on . Rather than having to mock up the same damn card component for the umpteenth time in Sketch, they can use their time to think about microinteractions (microinteractions.com/what-is-a-microinteraction), introduce some thoughtful animation to their UIs (http://valhead.com/ui-animation/), iterate over components to make them more functional & beautiful, or do any number of other things that designers historically never had time to do because they too busy making homepage_v18_FINAL_final_v2.psd.
As for Andy Clarke's work to make style guides more attractive and purposeful, I'm totally on board: atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/chapter-5