Is this as good as it gets more or less?

Everything just adds up. Most mods don't matter for loading times though (they may influence perfomance though, depending on the mod), unless you are talking about custom content. Loading and save times will get longer the longer you play a town, which is the main issue. Sims collect stuff, connections to other sims, get tons of skills etc., you probably add stuff to lots. It's nearly impossible (igazor may object :wink: ) to play towns forever. At some point, I use NRaas Porter to pack the whole town up and move them to either a new town or a fresh version of the old one.