Definetely you can do communication in multiple things between classes apart from the umg. Hard referencing is not a good practice , on the other hand its ok to have hard referencing on umg especially during such gameplay moments when player is interacting with things. You are making a both way comms so you can use either a hard reference, an interface, event or something else. There is no down side to it especially if there is no hundereds of actors in level.
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