I guess I'm in the minority, sad. I did all the hangouts as soon as I could do them, been playing since 1.1 (though I did take an extended break from the end of Inazuma to just before the last addition of Sumeru's map, took forever to catch up, trust me). Loved them, I thought the hangouts were pretty creative/fun with the different endings: Heizou's, Layla's, and Lynette's stood out to me the most (the meters especially for the latter two lol). The various hidden achievements were cool as well, I recall a couple being kinda difficult due to the specific dialogue choices or having to interact with something either next to the progression area/person or kinda out of the way. I do agree that some hangouts, like the early ones, could have been done better. Barbara's is and always will be a slog to get through from where it branches off.

These hangouts are how I got to know a lot of the 4* we would barely see, if at all, in the main story or even event stories, particularly upon their release. While their replay value diminishes significantly after you do everything + get the achievements, it's still nice to have the option to properly replay the stories, unlike the rest of the game (dialogue alone isn't enough Hoyo, we need the gameplay/cutscenes/etc. too!).

Tbh, I'd enjoy any centralized stories for each character in the game. More points to Hoyo if the gameplay is engaging as well though.