Apart from semi standard bug fix and texture mods.
Try the ordinator mod for a complete overhaul of skill trees to be a lot more interesting. It also makes playing a caster a lot more interesting compared to the vanilla experience. You probably also want the uncapper mod to customize the amount of perks you get per level.
Personally I also use material chest mods that are basically cheats to level crafting skills, I’m not interested in grinding them out multiple times. Up to you if you want to use them to gear yourself as well or not.
If you want the game to feel truly different, you need to change your play style as well. Playing a dual wielding berserker is a lot different than a stealth archer.

This is still a fun game to play, I’ve had several copies over the years. The sequel is absolute garbage unfortunately. It plays more like sim city than an RTS. There’s a good balance of scenarios to play, and many are quite fun. There are several very difficult end game scenarios I’ve never managed to beat.

By what definition is the 30% cut high? It’s the same percentage for Apple, Google, and Steam. Brick and mortar is generally around 50%. Amazon is a large range, but 30% is roughly average or even low. eBay charges less, but doesn’t do anything other than facilitate the transaction. Epic charges less to small developers, but that’s also mostly marketing.

The actual rules aren’t too terrible, plenty of these garbage patents would be invalidated with any real scrutiny applied to them. The problem is that it’s often cheaper to pay the settlement than the legal bill to fight, which is a more widespread problem that the legal system is too expensive and slow to be accessible to the vast majority of people. There’s also a secondary issue that patent officers are too generous in granting patents, and reform would be great. The problem is they are overworked so they can’t properly evaluate and research applications, and are encouraged to be overly permissive in granting patents.

The starter edition bundle is 11.99 us and the ultimate is 104.80 in USD. There’s basically 2 different types of DLCs in the paradox model. The core expansion type that is released every year or so and adds or fleshes out an area of the game, these are generally must haves and reasonably priced if you have played the game for a year(s) to mix it up. The second is smaller focused packs that add a faction or some extra flavor to a more minor mechanic. These are relatively expensive for what they offer, but aren’t always intended for everyone to buy.
If you are a hardcore completionist this model is bad for you, but if you can live with not having everything then it’s not terrible.

EA is great for small and medium sized studios to get games out that might be a bit more ambitious than they could manage with traditional models. The point of AAA is that they have the money to do big impressive things. They can already do focus groups and closed betas to get community feedback. The thing that might attract AAA attention is you could make a good amount without actually releasing anything.

Haven’t played HFW yet so I can’t really compare, it is on my wishlist though. That said I didn’t find GoW to be that great. It’s a significant departure from the style of earlier games. It feels more like a different game that was reskinned to be GoW. If you haven’t played the originals maybe that isn’t a factor.
Xbox 360 emulation is getting better, so it would be playable on pc.