Transition splits party. Any fix?

dioriel

So apparently I have to re-publish my foundry quest. Anyway, some people left comments (with bad reviews) that their party was split into separate instances when they entered the second map area of my quest.

Anyone know of a way to prevent this from happening, other than putting a warning in the notes that no one really reads anyway? This is a transition mid-story, so they can't just leave and come back, since transitions are one-way.

waryur

Unfortunately, it's a known bug that has yet to be fixed. Sometimes it works fine, sometimes it splits the party. There are several threads about this.

dzaims

So... foundry authors should just keep their quests to one map to avoid party splits? That's pretty much what I'm getting out of the conversation..

waryur

I say create what you want and what you enjoy to create. This is one of those unfortunate bugs we can't build a work around for. I'd suggest if doing multi-maps, put a note in the description. Or, as many do, an NPC "author" or pop up message once the quest is loaded that they have to read before continuing. Lastly, I'd reach out and politely explain to those who gave bad reviews the unfortunate limitations beyond our control, and ask if they would consider running it again, perhaps solo.

That being said... Don't let the idea of doing one map quests deter you or your creativity. If you do one map quests, you can still have a lot of play area, be it an indoor or outdoor setting. Not every quest needs to be a dozen maps long. I think the foundry limit is 50 actually, lol. And there's the argument that fewer maps means not as much time being spent on the load screen, because it adds to the player's overall play time waiting for each map to load and negative reviews can result. We don't like waiting 10 seconds for PvE dungeon transition maps to load. The larger, more detailed the foundry map, the longer the load time, and the players notice.

A lot of authors actually build with just one map, because soooo much can be done, indoor or outdoor. Villages and castle keeps being built on a giant outdoor map, or transitioning from customs rooms using an indoor map. I'm trying to remember, but one of my favorite examples of this is one by I believe @xemtk where you climb a mountain and go into a cave system behind waterfalls, come back out in a different area, and it's all one map. A well done map can feel like 10 maps.

I design quests for solo play, not party. But I can't stop a party from running it so... create what you want and what you enjoy to create.