You can change vertex size in Blender by scrolling down in the Themes menu in Preferences. The default is 3 pixels, which feels very close to the tiny object origin in size. I doubled that value to 6, which is closer to Modo's default vertex size and also makes it easier to select vertices.
Modo's Group Selected Items exists in Blender, but it's different. You have to enable the Add Mesh: Extra Objects Add-on to get Parent to Empty to show up under the Add > Mesh submenu at the very bottom. Ctrl-G (Modo) does something else in Blender. I assigned this to the Shift-P hotkey, instead. Thanks to Lukas Stratmann…