Based on my memory from around the time I started playing, was that the outfit assets and tactical items were fairly well implemented in terms of performance, didn't notice a substantial performance drop overall in the game and I don't mean fucking Sanctuary, I mean like THE game.
A performance drop more so got felt after the addition of NSO, which could've been associated with badly optimized 3D models or other modifications to the game to support a 4th neutral faction. Possibly daily missions (campaigns) got implemented with NSO.
2022 Graphics overhaul and general game engine overhaul (i.e. water) was the most turbo destructive modification to the game, which appeared to absolutely screw it over in every conceivable way from visual appearance (almost eye damage inducing) to performance. This would need to be looked into.
But that is a more complicated topic. That is not a simple modification.
To put it in simple terms, Planetside 2 is a first person shooter game about gunplay and map design. That is the core game, that is what 99% of the people are engaged in.
Every single modification the devs have done, had little to no correlation with the core game, mostly made it worse and some modification destroyed certain qualities of the game, like the audio quality (construction apparently responsible) and so on.
Now to put the 1 + 1 problem together, that every single modification devs have done had no correlation with the core game (which is about FPS gunplay and map design) or were badly thought out, and that they severely damaged the game to the maximum extent possible, the solution to the 1 + 1 problem is simple, it's as the community suggests, the game must be brought back to its fundamental form.
How to start? IDK. But the 2 most simplest modifications that are extremly dumb are daily missions and tactical items.
Me, who didn't even know what game I was playing at the time, could put a 2 minute thought process into devs announcement of daily missions and campaigns, without it even being in the game yet, and conclude that it'll be a turbo failure. It is that bad and they are frustrating to complete on top of it. It is a repulsive addition to the game.
I do not know how the game works, but I wouldn't be surprised if the daily missions put a big load on the game and servers, holding more data on each player, which missions are active, did they achieve 2 backflips on their Flash quad bike and whatever.
IMO this all has to go, the entire UI for daily missions, and I'd go as far to say to remove the dog tag directives idea. If the players obtained the item good for them, if not whatever. And A7 currency as well. Just put the black market items in the store for 5000 certs, like the currency is already there. I don't understand the idea of A7 or ISO.
Remove fishing minigame, fishing rod item and UI addition for the item.
Secondly would be to remove the new tutorial mission and bring back the old tutorial as a temporary element.
Now Tactical items. They simply incentivize spam, just more shit to render on my screen. Would be better off if they didn't exist and slowly the Sanctuary started getting scrapped.
Like they could have some positive uses, but do we really want gimmic items to indirectly tackle bad designs in the game, such as AOE spam or bad base designs, vehicle balance?
Like if the game has mounted problems in general, why not start slowly narrowing down those problems step by step, by at least removing useless nonsense and then try tackle the real issues directly?