IMO one of the best features of AppImage is that it makes it easy to extract without needing external tools. It's usually pretty easy for me to look at an AppImage and write a PKGBUILD to make a native Arch package; the format already encodes what things need to be installed where, so it's only a question of whether the libraries it contains are the same versions of what I can pull in as dependencies (either from the main repos or the AUR). If they are, my job is basically already done, and if they aren't, I can either choose to include them in the package itself assuming I don't have anything conflicting (which is fine for local use even if it's not something that's usually tolerated when publishing a package) or stick with using the AppImage.

> It should be noted that AppImages tend to be noticeably slower at runtime than other packaging methods

'Noticeably slower' at what? I've run, e.g. xemu (original xbox emulator) as both manually built from source and via AppImage-based released and i never noticed any difference in performance. Same with other AppImage-based apps i've been using.

Do you refer to launching the app or something like that? TBH i cannot think of any other way an AppImage would be "slower".

Also from my experience, applications released using AppImages has been the most consistent by far at "just working" on my distro.