Nm4g I agree with you completely. The date this problem started was on or just after April 3 2018.
Today is April 19 2018, spanning 16 days there is still no word from anybody except for a few statements made by the "North American" Community Manager Braddock512
October is too far away to consider waiting for BF2018 or BFV and either way, paying to be a premium member, then having to buy a new game every year, is ridiculous!
EA have lost their voice on this matter and everybody in Australia is switching to other titles. It will soon be completely over for the Battlefield "Franchise", due to the complete lack of consideration, transparency and as demonstrated with Battlefront II - greed.
Why on earth would anyone continue to waste their life trying to play a broken title, which the publishers are either incapable of fixing, too busy to resolve or even fully acknowledge the existence of any problem and essentially pay for the "privilege" of being test subjects, to a team of developers being pumped to produce titles each year, along with DLC expansions, add-on's (such as incursions), battle-packs, weapon skins... all of which does nothing to help game play quality and reliability seems to go out the window, with every new update!?
Whatever was "Broken" on April 3rd update, how about just rolling it back and reviewing the impact on Australian gamers in the month of April 2018, as an actual problem, which needs to be resolved and fixed, before pushing more broken titles on the market, leaving us the consumers spitting chips, quite frankly hating the position we are placed in due to internal mismanagement by a company who repeatedly not only appear technically incompetent, but totally ignores major problems in their published titles, goes against their own claim of "standards" (implying double standards), where the last release the company offered, shed billions from the company's value?
The solution we have been presented, is to break the current working titles (without loot boxes), ignore problems for weeks, utilize support of a person from a country "not impacted" by the problem (so not really 'feeling' the weight of the problem, as they're still able to play fine..), promise it will be better in Battlefield 5 or 2018, which 'might be' WW2 or Bad Company 3 - but in reality, who longer even cares?
These games from Bad Company 2 onward, have been nothing short of disastrous for DiCE, who I'm certain are great developers of premium titles, as I've been playing nearly all of their titles and ability speaks for itself. Since EA have taken the reins, BF3 onward having been nothing short of catastrophic levels of mess after mess made to each one of the titles, all which is passed onto the customers, while they "work through" the issues.
The most worked on title is BF4 and still to this day, it remains the "go to" title, should you actually want to play one of DiCE's titles, to avoid potentially ending up in the same (very) old... "technical issues".
We are not "testers" and this is the end of the line for your products, which you support and you make claims to offer as a finished retail product, which is "fit for purpose".
In reality it might be, depending on which update EA recently rolled out and what was broken in the process!
This is Insanity and unsustainable as a business model.
The facts are this. Either be transparent and inform "very clearly" the nature of problems, solutions, ETA on fixes, or stop selling software altogether.
EA are bound by their own agreements and anybody who just bought the BF1 title, since April 3 has nothing but a campaign for their money, without so much as "half" and explanation as to what the problem is, when it will be resolved or anything that you would expect from publishers of AAA products and services.
It is not only unethical trading, it is illegal as the products sold to all Australian consumers since April 3 2018, are not fit for the purpose of which they are advertised and sold.
Full refunds should be the next step from the customers perspective as we are clearly not getting what we paid for.
