Party appears to be deleted if data loading fails

[Alys]

As reported by Cynthia @ravenlune (9272ab2c-4b66-4b74-aebd-799725885d1c) in the Report a Bug guild:

"when I first opened [a] page ... on desktop, the banner at the top of the page showed up as the "Invite Party members" text, with the mention of the Basi-list quest and everything. This caught me really of guard because I'm already in a party, and I just checked that I still am. It went away after a browser refresh, but I figured I might post about it. I didn't get a screenshot since I was really freaked out and just tried to refresh it immediately."

I.e., while the website was loading, Cynthia's party data wasn't fetched from the database, presumably due to a temporary glitch from a dropped internet connection, or database slowness, or some other cause. The website then displayed the default header that you see when you're not in a party.

Technically, that behaviour isn't exactly a bug because the website is supposed to display that default header when it isn't given party data (the bug is whatever glitch prevented that party data from being fetched successfully), however as Cynthia says, it's disturbing and for a player who didn't have the presence of mind to reload the site, it could be quite distressing if they think they've been removed from the party.

A more ideal situation would be for the website to distinguish between the player not being in a party (display the default header) or the party information not being fetched correctly (either refetch or display a "please reload" message).
For example, if the website sees that the user has a value for party._id but no party data, it could attempt a refetch. That situation would also occur if the party had been deleted but the user still had the party id in their account due to a different kind of bug, but that situation should be rare.

I'm marking this suggestion-discussion for now.

[Alys]

Another report already:

@Faranae (8fd13242-4da2-4206-b2bc-20f6ececf86e):
"I had the same issue this evening as @ravenlune, although mine was more persistent. Repeated refreshes did not restore my party, just kept getting a 502 but the rest of the site loaded. Naturally when I came here, it fixed itself! Since I knew after the second failure when I actually got the 502 that I was not unpartied, I wasn't worried. But it did make for a weird experience. XD"

[veeeeeee]

Eventually we'd like for a special loading state so that users don't see the empty party and think they've been kicked out, but for now, we're deferring this in favor of more urgent problems.