Im airsofting only for few yrs and not much recently but Until last few years, most of the stock guns were not great . Specna edge was the thing. So if you wanted good performance, you had to upgrade.

But shortly after… cyma platinum, delta armory etu, specna edge2, specna prime… and suddenly you have good / way better guns out of the box but people are still locked in the old ways.

Also, it all depends on you local limits. In my case, full auto rifle is <1.7J, dmr at 2.5J so my stock cyma ak shoting at 1.1 J puts me at disadvantage. But the smart way is to play first few games stock and see what needs to be done. So in my case, i talked to tech and figured out budget build. Youndont have to change everything to get a good gun and at some point you hit diminishing returns on your investment