Yeah. Lots of people did. Because it's to be used in certain situations where plotting and marriage isn't going to get you the desired result. Limiting the player in approaches to situations without replacing the lost choice with something just means the player is forced to use the silly plot killing system which hardly works anyway and takes way too long to get the results you're looking for. Hence; they deleted a part of the game that didn't need it in the name of 'balance' without actually.. balancing anything about it.
I find it hilarious that the notion of nobles hiring armed thugs to kill people at their discretion is.. unrealistic. Not as realistic as getting your arbitrary plot% to 1000% and hoping it doesn't just instantly fail after waiting two years. Because that's more fun. Especially when you realize you've lost a feature you can use effectively in other situations that aren't completely gamey, like 99% of user-paradox game interactions.
It's also a good gold sink. If a player really wants to screw around assassinating people all the time they won't be in a position to blob as easily. If a player wants to play like that there were trade offs. It doesn't cost you, the player, any effort to assassinate the most powerful person in the world in CK2. There is no inherent cost besides time and the money spent to bribe people. I feel 0 fear when I start a plot to kill the caliph of the abbasids, the pope, the HRE emperor, anyone. Because the AI doesn't care. They won't react even if they find out about the plot. They've totally neutered an area of player-AI interaction that used to atleast have some sort of retaliation. The only time plots aren't 100% safe for you is against your own realm, and even then the dishonor is negligible. But I don't know many players which do in-realm plotting [which isn't in the first few decades to get inheritance of your capital's baronies and certain counties], so even that trade-off is a bit weak.
Basically, I want the AI to actually give a damn about plots targeting them and retaliate accordingly. They got rid of that when the assassination button was arbitrarily removed and haven't put anything of comparable utility to replace the hole in the mechanic. I've never, ever, ever been assassinated by someone outside my realm since the assassinate button was taken out.