States are mostly reliable as long as you stay on he same slide. Still, as Kendal says, initiating a trigger using "State is..." for the When part is sometimes questionable. Variables always are reliable.
What you are describing should generally work. The fact that it fails the same way for every layer suggests a logic problem. But troubleshooting is just guessing without seeing the .story file. If you upload it, someone might be able to solve the issue. Here are the best practices for uploading a .story file:
- Only include slides that are related to the problem.
- Be sure objects, layers, motion paths, and variables have meaningful names.
- If there is proprietary content, replace or delete it. For example, replace proprietary text with “lorem ipsum” text.
- Use a browser to come to this page, and click "Add Attachment at the bottom of your post to upload.