Soft references and Actor Components

[orchid snow]

How is character customization handled in real projects, so there won't be hard references to all items, clothes, accessories etc?

• initially I tried using an Actor Component which is spawned when needed and then destroyed afterwards, but just having it as a variable so it can be stored somewhere when it's spawned is enough to make it a hard reference;
• after trying to figure out how to do soft references for this particular scenario, I gave up and wanted to use an Interface instead, but couldn't figure out an elegant way for this either;
• and then I thought maybe it's better to have another Pawn with just character customization logic and meshes on it, and swap it with the one that has gameplay logic. This way everything is loaded only when needed and the playable one is not bloated;

My current solution is using this 2nd Pawn method, just to keep things smaller, but I feel like using the Actor Component could work and I'm missing something. Cause that's the point of Actor Components, right? Keeping things modular. Doesn't it defeat the purpose if it creates hard references anyway? Was thinking of using Actor Components for other mechanics as well, like abilities but would run into the same issue. Is this not doable?