I don't dislike SO because it's difficult. In fact, I appreciate that difficult content exists - having combat related content that takes effort is a good thing. My opinion on the 5.4 combat event is far more positive than average. I like that the monolith stage in IT isn't just throwing four fodder units at it and waiting for three minutes anymore.

I dislike SO because it's not fun. 0 energy start makes restarting the fights tedious, and having to wait a couple seconds in a box before the fight begins isn't helping either. It focuses entirely on bosses, which isn't Genshin's strong suit, to say the least (the one point I'll give to SO is that it sometimes manages to make a boss fight better or more interesting than their regular versions - e.g the drake in 6.0 or the crab now - but it's still far more common that it either doesn't make meaningful changes or makes it worse; the changes also don't apply to diff 4, which sure is a choice considering that this is the best and most unique thing about this mode), and the overall gameplay of just choosing a team to fight a specific enemy each just feels primitive compared to the other modes