Character select in online multiplayer with many character options

I’ve looked at every tutorial and video I could find and it seems like most people have a list of class references that the player is selecting between, which is then used to spawn an actor.

The problem is that if the character selection has many options (say 1000), just loading the character select screen will take too long. I have just 9 high detail characters and it takes sometimes 20 seconds to load the character select menu (and it’s just image buttons and a list of class references). Just having a list of character references in a menu or level, causes an asset load for each one of those references in that menu/level. They are references so I guess it needs the asset to reference.

Ideally, the player would select from the 9 choices (images on buttons), and only the one selected would get loaded.

I was thinking of doing an asyc load of the character asset selected at runtime, but before doing so thought it’s worth asking if there’s a better way.