Influence: Exploring the Potential of StarkNet's Native Space Strategy MMO

While most blockchain games chase hype, Influence quietly builds a fun, immersive space MMO on StarkNet that is truly unlike other blockchain games. Amidst the evolving landscape of blockchain gaming, Influence stands out as a project with committed developers, a strong community, and actual fun game design. While not currently receiving widespread attention, Influence exhibits unique characteristics and technical underpinnings that should excite anyone who has grown bored of the usual blockchain game releases.

Understanding Influence

Influence is a massively multiplayer online (MMO) space strategy game set within the Adalia system's asteroid belt. Humanity, seeking a future beyond a ravaged Earth, drives interstellar ambition toward colonization, resource extraction, and a strategic struggle for dominance within this asteroid-rich sector.

Influence remains in active development. Its early 'Limited Mainnet Release' offers a view of the game world and limited UI while we wait for the full Exploitation launch.

The first phase of the game's release focuses on exploitation of resources, mining, manufacturing, and the marketplace. Players from EvE Online who enjoyed this side of EvE will likely find a lot to love about the upcoming release of Influence.

The game's release is structured around three core phases:

- Exploitation: Initial colonization focuses on securing asteroids and establishing a foundation for economic and strategic expansion.

- Discovery: Players advance technologically, expanding the economy, player skills, and playstyles.

- Conflict: Open conflict hits Adalia, and players will find themselves fighting for their resources, and other's.

The Impact of StarkNet

Influence's native implementation on StarkNet brings potential advantages for players:

- Frictionless Gameplay: StarkNet features like account abstraction translate into fewer interruptions for transaction signing during various in-game actions. This minimizes distractions from gameplay immersion.

- Robust Scalability: The ZK-rollup foundation of StarkNet supports a vast MMO environment. Large numbers of players can engage in ingame actions, trade networks, and galactic conflicts without performance degradation.

- On-Chain Integrity: As a key principle, Influence is designed to have assets, actions, and events exist fully on-chain. This facilitates greater transparency and verifiable ownership.

A Note on Current Visibility

Influence currently operates without aggressive marketing initiatives and has yet to capture widespread attention within the cryptocurrency gaming sphere. They have however cultivated a very strong core community that has already built websites, guides and tutorials, and corporations waiting to enter the game on release. This lack of attention however is a great advantage for anyone looking to get ahead by investing in the game now, before the game gets any closer to launch and real marketing steps up.

Information Sources

To monitor Influence's progress and potential in-game asset acquisition opportunities, Utilize the following resources:

- Official Website: https://www.influenceth.io/

- Twitter: https://twitter.com/influenceth

- Discord: https://discord.gg/influenceth

- Farcaster: https://warpcast.com/influence

- Wiki: https://wiki.influenceth.io/

- Substack: https://influenceth.substack.com/

What Makes It Different

The developers working on Influence have made it clear over the years that producing a quality game is their top priority. This is not a cash grab, or a mobile game built on cute NFTs. They've gone so far as to work with StarkNet developers to improve the chain the game will run on just to ensure that it will be as good as it possibly can. They have broken release into stages based on StarkNet developmental stages so as not to limit features of the game based on limitations of the chain, to get the most out of everything they build.

Should I Invest & How?

This part is a bit complicated, and I highly suggest doing your own research on the Influence discord. I won't be explaining all of the details here as this is not an NFT investment post, but I feel like I needed to explain a little about this before anyone rushes out to buy NFTs for the game.

There are currently two NFT collections for Influence: Asteroids and Crewmates. Some of these are particularly good and even come with bonuses and starter packs on launch, including the ingame currency called SWAY. You need to be aware of all of the different traits, what they mean, if an asteroid can mint a crewmate, which sale it is from, and many other details before making an educated purchase of the current Influence NFTs.

You do not need to buy any of them to simply play the game on launch. You will be able to mint crewmates at launch for $5, they will just not be as good as the currently released ones. Same with asteroids, you will be able to buy normal asteroids ingame or even rent plots on asteroids owned by others. If you want a head start however, I do suggest doing your research on what advantages the different kinds of asteroids and crewmates have, what all the different traits mean, and making an educated decision on what NFTs are worth buying for what you plan to do.