I personally hope that the performance of Planet Coaster will get better over time, so that more people can play the game (still keeping in mind that the larger the parks are, the lower the fps will be).
I too think Frontier will make the game perform better over time. However, I dont necessarily think the game is badly optimized. It makes even use of hyperthreading. We don't know how complex the guest and ride simulation really is, so it could be it actually is quite optimized already. Of course this is no excuse to the actual performance of the game, since these complex simulations might not really be necessary from a gameplay perspective.
The game also allows players to place a near infinte amount of objects. I am not surprised the framerates goes down when you make buildings, each existing out of 1000s of pieces, especially when you use very detailed objects.
Combine this with the in my opinion great graphics and lighting system and you have a
very demanding game. To me it seems most people underestimate the complexness and graphical fidelity of Planet Coaster, but that could just be me. You could say the game simply is too complex for the current consumer hardware, like it is ahead of its time. Now, was it worth it to sacrifice performance to achieve what the game has achieved? Perhaps, it depends the person. For me, it is. I am playing the game on relative outdated hardware (2600k and gtx 760) and find how the game performs for
me pretty good. The framerate will go down significantly in bigger parks, but for me it stays very consistend. That makes low framerates much more bearably. Besides, in a game like Planet Coaster I don't really need high fps.
So all in all, the game might not be as badly optimized as people make it out to be, it could just be a bit ahead of its time.
Also, I am aware of the issues the simulations are having, namely coaster friction and guests not queuing, but this does not detract from the possible complexness of these simulations.
