What's wrong with a coin having masternodes? I guess it's the implementation and delivery that matters. There can't be a bunch of masternodes owned by the developer at the start or it looks unfair and the masternode reward early on has to be careful not to over-centralize assets to a few early adopters. Masternodes are great as long as developers are responsible.
I would agree with that and actually just wrote a little article that touches on the subject.
https://www.reddit.com/r/raptoreum/comments/9vggo5/how_is_raptoreum_different_then_ravencoin_and_how/Masternodes have a bad rap because they have been used to facilitate so many scams or they just were not well thought out.