Almost every single game with a group of regular friends will eventually become fun, and if he wishes to do the things you just mentioned he could do it in most source engine games with a lot more freedom.
Agreed. I mini boycotted Blizzard since 2012 because of starcraft stuff, and I fully cutoff blizzard from my spending in 2018. I didn't even try reforged, and I played both custom and standard games in WCIII religiously. I was good at both dota and 1v1 (semi pro in the latter).