Obviouly, we all can just assume what exactly happens when the crash occured since nobody from Funcom actually comments here on the issue.
I saw at reddit an announcement that the “infinite loading screen” as some people call it will be fixed in an upcoming Hotfix 2. When you browse through the forum you will encounter a lot of threads with people complaining about the “infinite loading screen” issue from other updates.
So, my point is just that I try to reason about the origin of the crash and my intention is getting the Funcom developers faster on track to fix the bug. I’m pretty sure it is about how updates introduce new items in the game thus how these new items are coded in the sqlite. From my own experience in software engineering and sqlite in particular I know how hard it is to make a viable upgrade path for versions that exist out in the field for a long time. It is even harder to test, it would require careful planing in the development of the database file and evolution of the types. My impression is that none of this exist at Funcom, the game software is brittle, it crashes as soon something mildly unexpected happens, like loading a mod where a resource is missing. Obviously you could just write handling code that just rejects the mod and loads the rest but no, CE just crashes most of the time.
I was enthusiastic about the game and also about supporting a “small” game studio, I bought the main game, Siptah and some DLCs. But alas, I feel like I’m done with it. It’s just very poor coding, rushed features that break the lore, break basic game mechanics and what not.
Sorry, I may come back when Hotfix#6 arrives, maybe.
I’d wish Steam would offer the possibility to just stick to a version. I’d pick the one before AoS was introduced, because AoS broke Siptah in terms of game balance, but they don’t care anyway.