I like it the way it is, makes leaving town to quest and adventure have another layer of strategy. If someone wants to bypass that strategy layer with money then so be it. I certainly would prefer that it be a mod rather than a MTX, and will definitely not be buying any regardless.

This has been solved for a long time. If you want to force people to leave the town to quests and adventure just stick to Morrowind style fast travel where fast travel doesn't go everywhere. If you want people to be able to fast travel everywhere then let them fast travel everywhere. If people can fast travel everywhere but don't want to fast travel everywhere then it's a single player game, they're free to make up their own rules on how they want to play.

There's no justifiable reason to slap a price tag on fast travel and that's the issue most people have. The fact that it was removed from review builds shows that even the devs know how fucking shitty it is. No need to defend a shitty practice.