What we, the humanity, need, is a free-as-in-freedom open source set of web applications that work like Google Docs / Spreadsheets / Slides, but can be self-hosted and would natively use OpenDocument file format.
What I care is that the documents that I generate with LibreOffice look beautiful and that depends on me choosing beautiful high-quality typefaces (not the default ugly typefaces of LibreOffice) and on choosing adequate formatting of the documents.
All that LibreOffice has to do is provide adequate support for all OpenType features and for all formatting options that one might want. LibreOffice does this and at least LibreOffice Writer does it better than MS Word.
In LibreOffice one can still discover quickly in which menu or dialog box the desired option can be found. I have been using MS Office for decades, but in recent versions I can spend many minutes searching for some option that has been moved into some random menu/toolbar that has no obvious logical relationship with it.
While MS Excel remains much better than LibreOffice Calc (but the latter is adequate for most simple tasks), I would consider as a cruel and unusual punishment to be forced to use MS Word instead of LibreOffice Writer.
These enterprises should invest a fraction of what they used to spend on Microsoft Office into a development effort to modernize LibreOffice. Last time I tried to use it, it seemed like it was on life support in relation to Microsoft Office.
In my opinion, MS Office has been improved steadily during the decade ending in 2003/2004, then it has stagnated, then it has been degraded continuously until today.
The UI of LibreOffice is ugly, but it is easy to do with it what you need. The UI of MS Office has become extremely convoluted for any of the more sophisticated tasks.
Also, the content creation is stuck in 2004 as well. It works perfectly fine if you're creating an IEEE-formatted research paper or similar wall of text but if you're creating something you want to give to customers or to look professional and nice, it's literally the last program you'd want to use to accomplish that. There's no nice way to say it.
What needs modernizing precisely? IMHO the UI for most things in libreoffice's word processor is simple and easily found. Can't say the same of word these days.
There's an effort called numerique, out of fr and de governments. It seems to have docs, spreadsheet and meet now, and more on the way.
Source here as well https://github.com/suitenumerique
Also, have you tried enabling the ribbon in LibreOffice? View > User Interface > Tabbed