I did read your post. It doesn't actually make sense. The art, specifically the art choices and terrible shader, has nothing to do with perf (unless the shader is murdering frames, but that doesn't seem to be the case). If the art had to deal with fewer draw calls or triangles or the physics were a mess you might be on to something. That's not the problem. The problems are decisions and not implementation. The art team presumably knows that they're using UE4 and what limitations they are likely going to have, so having a character's head look like it's topped with fondant isn't the engineering team's fault.
As far as not understanding gamedev, you got me there. I'm frequently reminded of how little I know when I'm forced to sit in on damn server team meetings as the design liaison. If there's one thing I don't care about, it's rpc bandwidth optimization. I just want them to make the game faster. Jeez.
Where do you work? Maybe you could teach me a little about gamdev and when/where the graphics tightening takes place.