To be honest, the request itself is an interesting one. (While it really must sound sarcastic for people who landed on this topic before and worked their brains through the netcode jungle)
At this point let´s not talk about an MMO preset for a moment, but something that would make it easier to start creating multiplayer content with EOS, for example. To use “SIMPLE” multiplayer things “WITHOUT” loosing money because you followed some “free AWS server” Tutorial or buying marketplace assets like a server browser just to figure that its just pretty bare bones and the seller more or less talks about that he could get hired to build a front/backend for you.
Taking me as an example: I am an old grumpy Senior Artist without much coding experience, creating a vertical slice at the moment. I have no problems setting up all my Materials, Assets, Characters, Visual Content and basic Game-Play functions. This vertical slice is meant to go into production and of course for hiring programmers and network-alchemists. But since its multiplayer based, the struggle to start off a project like this for an artist without big coding background is real. In fact, it is hell.
Programmers get their belly’s filled with easy to place and free art content all day while the art people gets a Cedric-Guide-For-Dummies-With-Coding-Background-Book smashed into their face - as (funny) comparison. Asking for help on that multiplayer stuff feels like I am Bilbo and want to steal Saurons Ring from Gollum. Take the joke like Ricky Gervais is talking to you and I bet you get my point.
Jokes aside, I am digging through the muds and odds of Multiplayer creation in UE4 for weeks now. I have read Cedrics guide like three times, understanding between 1 and 20 percent of the whole based on the number of Energy-cans in my fridge. I tried EOS and failed because its like jogging through Mordor on a hot summer day. I tried Steam Advanced Sessions and failed by running into dead ends because all tutorials just ends at certain points with the YouTubers sentence: See, it works for me, bye guys!
Finally, I came to the point where things start to work! Not perfect in any way because this journey is a constant trial and error every second and within my Blueprints looks like a burning house.
In conclusion, I think it would make sense to figure out on how to optimize the first contact with network/multiplayer for users that maybe just need a quick solution to show a proof of concept. For example, just take some architect who wants to show his building concept to a customer overseas. Things that are not that easy to setup as the little “listen server” and “number of player” buttons suggests. This is a big trap once you think about hiding IPs, trying Chat functions, bare inventory saving and not even being able to run proper tests with two PCs in the same network like they would be outside of it.
I strongly suggests any newcomer to multiplayer to write down what they want/need and then digging through YouTube looking for like five videos that covers each topic because every single one will be a Dark Souls game on its own, hard, but not impossible to beat.
Nice side-topic:
[USER=“3137745”]Data D Soong[/USER] mentioned Ultima Online and it feels so unnatural that it was possible to run your little Ultima Online Sphere Server back in the days and had 200 people running around, most of them with ISDN or even modem speed internet connections. In 2021, its not possible to do something like this anymore?
In order to keep the Ricky Gervais alive at this point, did X and Y got a baby, called it Z and got too fat to move? What is the difference between walking 2D Characters on a big open 2.5D (!) world in the year 2001 with modem and walking 2D Characters on a big open (2D) 3D world in the year 2021 on fiber connection? I have a project under my bed that would allow a server like this but when I started on researching for UE4, all I found was a wall of crying souls, telling me that I would need scale-able Server-Systems and looked at me like I want to recreate World of Warcraft. In fact…it would be just a little Ultima Online tribute.
Cheers and love
Toby