He does have a point IMO. For me, the most irritating thing about travelling really is clicking (no, I'm not lazy i'm extremely lazy).
IMO, I don't think that the boots are overpowered - they are in very, very fixed locations, so they give a sharp range as to just how far you can go; furthermore, you still need to click multiple times to move around and even more, they will not allow you access to normally restricted scenes. I'd say they're just a convenience for now and genuinely don't think they're game-breaking (with the exception of newbies getting stuck in NC or GG.)
The only way I would change this would be to only make these clickables visible to players with say... more than 120 active days. By then, they will actually mean something when they get access to them, rather than take them for granted from day 1.
As for the leashes... I'm sort of in-between. Technically speaking, it depends on the leash owner whether the slave is the actual beneficiary or whether the owner is; to be blunt, nobody is to blame that some people wuss out and are all nice to their slaves, show them places and give them things instead of using them. The slave potentially gives up quite a bunch of freedom, without the ability of knowing whether they will have a nice owner or not, for a large period of time - there were discussions of repercussions for slaves that are not available in-game during that period. Surely the slave isn't fully the beneficiary then.
However, the idea of working for a leash also sounds somewhat decent. I've no clue how it's better and it's not my place to decide. I'm just pointing out stuff I noticed in this topic.