I also prefer real folders with placeholder files instead of placeholder-folders.
However, a subtle benefit to placeholder-folders is that they prevent new files from automatically being downloaded inside them. Odrive doesn’t have any other way to control which folders should auto-download new files and which shouldn’t, so you could consider placeholder-folders to be a way for users to communicate that they don’t want new things downloaded there.
A related problem to having the kind of setup you and I want (real folders, placeholder files) is that new folders from other computers cannot be auto-downladed; they always appear as placeholder-folders ( Disable Progressive Sync? ). The global auto-download setting should have a checkbox to control this.