Didn't play the game on release because I heard about its poor optimization. How are things now?

no, its almost the same, far form perfect dont buy it, dont suport it

I played it in 1080p (down from 1440p that I usually use), using frame limiter set on 80 hz and it was fine. So I did have to sacrifice resolution to get it to run smoothly but I forgot about it and really enjoyed the game.

Probably not brilliantly optimised so you might wait for another update and a price reduction before dipping in if you have older hardware specs.

Optimization - when?