Well my site is pretty specialized. One of one in fact, so I can't agree with that statement.
Since 2001 starting with vb we had dozens of mods. Then going to vb4.25 we were down to a few. Last year we jumped to myBB which really is a great little board but the need for mods was huge and I had worries with a freeware solution.
Sadly I decided to buy vb5 which was a disaster. Thankfully I was able to migrate to xenforo and import and merge so it all worked out in the end.
The only thing in my opinion with xenforo is the lack of a really good payment system. It seems that no one really cares that much about getting paid or how to increase sales / revenue. WTF??? The xenforo disallow system is completely useless. Even vb offered stacked or conditional options for memberships.
I have not found a mod yet that meets our needs but hopefully someone will listen or we can find a coder that will improve the system.