Well, are you the overpop faction? As that's why that Queue actually triggers. So you don't further the population gap between Empires.
They need to be better at opening other continents. I played early in the day when there was only 1 continent open and spawned to VR and couldn't play for several minutes. Not that I'd want to be alone on a continent, but at least it would open up to get things moving there.
I thought they fixed it a while ago so that if only one continent was open, there was no queue. I guess they unfixed it.
I don't recall any patch notes about it, but it seems they're being tougher on continent population imbalance. I don't know if there's a new hard limit or if it's based on the ratio to other factions. Either way, I welcome it. If I have to not play on my main to get on the continent, so be it. Balance comes at a cost, and this is a price I'm willing to pay.
It looks like they have reintroduced the harder limit they imposed some time ago, which was then relaxed to 2 factions balance due to the tears. Of course, having two factions 'in balance' invariably means there is a third faction having a miserable time and looking at the population tracker - there seems to be a lack of VS on Miller. They have stated that they will be monitoring population carefully AND any 4th factioners with the new 'rewards for alerts' system. Of course, 4th factioners could actually rectify the problem by logging on to their underpop toon. (I think that preventing players from playing is a bad idea - but having population imbalance is also bad - so maybe at least one continent should be unlocked and free from queues, so the zergers can have their fix and the rest can enjoy a more balanced game)
I think the new population controls are great. The last few days I have played on Connery, the pops have largely been 33% each +/- 1 or 2%. That's what we should have had a long time ago. People who get VR locked need to understand that if you are there when you log in that is because your poplation is already maxed out, and you should play another toon on another faction. logged into my TR toon yesterday to collect my membership certs, and there were about 60 people hanging around in VR. I got a good lol from taht. Of course people are going to whine about not being able to get into the game on their preferred toon, but I believe that a balanced population is much more important for the game in the long run than just letting people overpop just because they are unwilling to play another faction. Maybe it just me because I usually play whichever faction is underpop.
They seem to be pretty good about having 2 continents unlocked when there are enough players to support 2 continents. If one faction is severely over-pop then which continent has to put up with that? Are they just handed the free win on one of them? I don't see that as much of a solution. As a fairly new player I have a 90 something BR on TR and a 40 something on the other two factions. My TR has a lot of real money stuff and I really don't want to dump all that in to my other two at this point. If they are gong to keep a hard limit on factions then they really should open up more of your stuff to other characters, like let all implants and iso be shared, as well as any NS equipment on that account on that server. That would greatly limit the struggle of new players who don't have a high BR character for every faction.
As long as you bought it with real money NS equipment is shared across all factions that can use it. Certs don't work that way because certs are free. I spent most of my DBC on my NC toon, so my others don't have the same gear selection, but gear is gear. I don't need much new stuff on my other toons to compete.
I did buy a lot of NS stuff with real money for that exact reason. But you can't expect to keep players who might have dropped $100 on one character, expecting to only play that character, to invest more or happily play with nothing on another faction. If hard capped pops were a thing from the beginning, then they would have known what they were getting in to. But if they do this so late in the game's history, they need to make NS equipment more accessible. Could you imagine being a new free player and having to start 3 new accounts, how bad the grind would be? There's just no way they'd stick with this game.
