so as a newbie to PC bulding, does a good quality motherboard really make a massive difference to anything? or do they just support more ram etc the better you go?
The type of motherboard you get can certainly make a difference depending on your use case and what you are looking to get out of it. Enthusiast motherboards have a plethora of features that more budget boards do not to accommodate people with higher or more advanced requirements. For a simple example, say you want a build with lots of fans or custom liquid cooling that requires connectivity for cooling pumps, RGB, and such. A higher end motherboard will have lets say six fan headers in comparison to a budget board which may only have two. If you have tons of peripherals to connect to your PC because you are streaming, a higher end board will typically also have more USB ports than a budget board.
Now let's say you want to overclock your CPU to get as much FPS as possible when gaming. A more enthusiast board will have a robust VRM system and cooling solution that you won't find on a budget board.
At the end of the day, a budget board can be perfectly good for gaming if you don't need all the bells and whistles offered on the higher end stuff.