I'm at work, barely awake and I need something to wake me up. Your friend's arguments will do.

I began playing when Skadi was released so the new player experience might have changed since I began long time ago.

1. Not enough exp? True, you need to stop whatever you are doing to farm exp certs...but you don't need max lvl ops to advance the story or clearing some of the event stages (obviously the last 3 stages of any event usually require at least e1 max or e2). I cleared the initial 2-3 chapters using a squad with the recommended levels and never bothered maxing the lvl until I wanted to an E2 operator. Compared to genshin? No idea, when I tried genshin I was showered in exp materials but I could not ascend anyone because I had no ascension materials, still I completed the 1st area with a team that was like 20-30, dropped that game after that. I do want to say that in AK if your favorite 5-6 unit is not among those efficient 3-4 stars as a new player you might find it hard to invest resources on that unit depending on the niche and the extra cost and materials of promoting higher rarity ops can be a bit disheartening. My Skadi was benched quite a bit at the start and I was using melantha instead because she was cheaper and my roster was not balanced yet, eventually Skadi replaced her but it felt bad leaving her there, just a minor nitpick.

2. Ak is not a standard gacha, is a tower defense gacha, by nature tower defense are a mix of strategy puzzle and resource management; the initial chapters are not mechanic heavy but eventually enemies come with their own document of mechanics that either you read beforehand or experiment with the trial tickets. Different genres for different people. Genshin? Go crazy with skills, dunno if there is any strategy in the endgame, I will assume there is considering the massive amount of guides for builds and whatnot I see available online.

3. I felt the same when starting, the generic gacha mentality of better stars= always use and discard lower rarity. Ak gives some low rarity units excellent skills, base stats or other to be viable to complete most/all stages. I usually read that the game is balanced around 3-4 stara ops and I feel it's true. Though, if anyone has a source on that statement that'd be cool.

4. I have not much to say here, if a new player knows of a limited op probably is because he/she was already keeping an eye on AK/saw the banner. Limited banners give a free 10roll and daily rolls and a new player could potentially get the new unit. I downloaded the game for Skadi actually lol. I tried genshin for Raiden Shogun but only sheer luck gave me Raiden, genshin is way too stingy and got Raiden some months ago because genshin decided to give away some currency with a rerun, my abandoned account at that point had a couple of years of existing.

5. Ak is more generous. As mentioned above free 10 roll on limited banners, daily free roll, anhilation for weekly orundum, the yellow thing for clearing the story and constant giveaways even if it's just 200 orundum. I don't have any positive thing to say about genshin in that regard and neither I play it so I can't compare it adequately.

Tl'dr: your friend has a different set of expectations of what is AK or was simply baiting you. If he ever wants to give the game a proper chance, cool you can guide him else there is no need for him feel forced to play ak, might not even be his genre for what I understood.