This has been brought up a number of times since launch and, while all of the work and additions to the game since then shows just how dedicated the team is to making the experience and choices in the game better for many players, there's a huge, glaring hole in how we access realms created by others.
When attempting to share realm cards between players, you can craft them and hand them over, but the inventory system and portals do not play well together. You can see some information within your inventory that will not then display when attempting to play cards into the portal (creator, biome, level, etc), and so you are left to blindly hope that the cards showing in the portal menu line up the same as your inventory did when you checked.
I'm going to attach images of the issue below, but the process for trying to link up realms seems to currently be:
1) Craft or find a portal
2) Craft a realm card
3) If you have multiple realm cards in your inventory, try to remember which one is where you'd like to go, often by puzzling out the limited information given (Level 60 Forest, no creator listed, no metadata or notes field)
4) Count slots to reach the place in your inventory where the card seems to be
5) Play the card that number of slots into your portal interface
6) Hope that was right
I propose a few simple changes to make this a much smoother and more painless experience:
Mark all Realm Cards with creator name, realm type, and allow either a text field to enter our own notes, give some selectable metadata options that will display (preset markers like Gathering, Building, Questing, Respite, etc), or both
Duplicate the data between the portal and the inventory so it shows the same information in both places.
Let us name crafted cards outright
Category Tags | UI/UX, Building, Inventory, Realm Travel, Respite Realm, Portals |
Sentiment | Critical |