My Life as a Spy

by Skysaw
My Life as a Spy
Five teams of spies compete to secure documents, using nifty spy gadgets to foil their enemies.
ID:48306
 
Keywords: documents, life, skysaw, spy
I had played My Life as a Spy some time ago on Nadrew's server, somewhere in late 2002 to early 2003. It seems since I've been on it many years ago, not much has changed from when I left the MLaaS community in late 2004, so I'm going to blend my past experience from the game's prime into my run-through of it today, considering some things just aren't present (for example, the sole server was deserted when I started).

Exactly how I remembered it, I get the MLaaS splash image presented to me, with the generic "Choose a character" dialogue.

It's not fancy, but it works... however, the verb panel has a collection of actions already. For as long as I can remember, those four verbs appeared at login and were never removed for the professionalism -- the only one that might have any use at this point is who, but even then, it shouldn't appear in a panel already (or at all in the case of just one verb).

After being given an opportunity to name my spy, I appear in a small room.

You also get to hear the MLaaS music at this point -- anyone who has played the game previously will flashback to hacked kiosks upon hearing it, others will just hear a cello lead.

Anyways, in this room you choose the faction you want to join. The publicly available factions are red, green and black, and it is one of these you must choose here. Black agents have access to a ton of weapons and need relatively less skill ratings to use them, and have the best base defense; red agents have access to a temporary stat buff vendor ("stims") and their skills cost less to train; green agents are allowed to carry an extra document, they have a teleporter to get the city quickly, and have a "bug" vendor (for spying/listening in on others). There are also two agencies available for those willing to part with five bucks, and those are purple and whit. Purple agents trade the ability to wear armour and wield firearms for unique skills like pacify (disable all attacking in an area for a short while), sneak (move while hidden; everyone else immediately comes out of hiding when they move), and pickpocket, and white I'm not particularly sure about -- when I played MLaaS way back when, the faction wasn't working yet, and I've yet to meet a white to observe or ask them about their abilities.

There is usually "side reward bonus" on the server for specific factions (which is what the first two lines are in the above image), but I personally have no idea what that bonus applies to, if it's permanent, or even if it works. I chose to be a green agent, since it was the first faction I joined oh so many years ago. Now, I'm sent to the green base.

It seems I've run into a problem -- some sycophant has blocked in the green base (the other factions -love- blocking up green base). To push those boulders out of the way, you need a high strength rating, one that someone just starting can't achieve. It seems that I can't get out, however, green agents have a teleporter, remember? That's what's behind that transparent green box at the southeast corner of the base. Using that teleporter, I can get to the city and circumvent the need to push those boulders out of the way. The faction advantage is working out already!

At this point, I'm at the green city base (every faction has at least two bases) and I'm going to retrieve some documents here. Documents are your entire life as a spy here, considering it's the only self-sufficient way to get training points, and almost every enemy agent wants to get their hands on them. To get some documents, we visit the document clerk.

Depending on your rank, you can carry a specific number of documents. At level 1, it's two for most players (or three for a green, remember), so I pick up three of them and go drop them off. But what's this?

On my way to trying to remember where the North Central dropbox is, I happen across a secret document. These spawn all over the map just like some inventory items (which is where I got the leather boots) and award you extra cash upon successful delivery. You can also turn them in at your HQ for training points instead.

Oh yeah, the North Central dropbox is in the countryside. Anyways, that's basically half of the gameplay -- you pick up documents, and drop them off at the specified dropbox. When there's other players, they hide behind the dropboxes and swipe the documents you were looking to drop off, then go deposit it at their base for a significant reward.

The other item that comprises gameplay with the document running is the item vendors; all of those beige boxes with a picture on them from the city base screenshot are vendors. Each item you can get from a vendor has a "quality" rating which affects its performance. For instance, the leather boots I found are quality 8 with a protection rating of 6, whereas a quality 100 boot would have a protection rating quite high in the double digits. Vendors are susceptible to being "hacked", where use of them causes you to give free training points to the person who bugged it, and I believe you lose some cash to them as well.

Another element of gameplay is missions, with rewards ranging from access cards to medals. If there's one thing Skysaw certainly did right, it was the mission structures -- most of the missions require a specific sequence of completion, and a lot of them require the result of another mission to complete -- safe item mission requires a safe document medal, several missions require vouchers or training papers that you can only get to if the magenta mission was completed, periwinkle mission requires a purple application, so on and so forth. The most important rewards would be the access cards and the security chit, since access cards make life a whole lot easier in MLaaS, and security chits protect your stuff from being dropped upon death or stolen by enterprising purples.

The true glory of MLaaS is in multiplayer mayhem, which opens the potential for hacked kiosks, traps everywhere, shootouts and base raids, spying on people and all other manner of fun stuff. For reasons unbeknwnst to me, MLaaS has faded into obscurity in recent years, and just a few touchups could likely bring people back. It's certainly a gem obscured by its age and lackluster, albeit unique, graphics.
You forget the keycard missions, lightfoot medal, and secure bag missions.

Anyways the game is great with a bunch of players on each team coordinated strikes and other mischief.
you forgot about quite a few missions, and black has the best weapons, not red. The game isn't just about delivering docs, it's about killing pretty much. :P.
The game wasn't TOO bad with a lot of players, but the whole subscription system ruined it and turned it too RPG-like.

I didn't mind the missions too much as even "delivering documents" often came as different experiences for up to around level 10.

Past level 10 it was more about raiding other bases, and protecting yourself, which was fun until Purple and White (subscription) agencies became too superior and ruined the game.
You can achieve enough strength to push rocks at rank 1 it's called the koisk using the major/minor both on strength as i recall i use to do this back when i started so i could push them since the whites use to torment us newbies back then
Also only rank 1 greens are able to carry 3 other 4 it's 2 docs at rank 1
Demon27933 wrote:
You can achieve enough strength to push rocks at rank 1 it's called the koisk using the major/minor both on strength as i recall i use to do this back when i started so i could push them since the whites use to torment us newbies back then

The boost for choosing your major is insufficient on its own to reach the 31 strength needed to push boulders out of the way. At any rate, it's not fair for a newbie who just found MLaaS to have to spec his major stat boost into strength just to leave the base through the front door.
Uh yea but your able to get enough strength to push boulder at rank 1. I'm aware newbies are unaware of that but I've done it in the pass as an advantage and b/c of whites so its a helpful hint that major boost a stat to 25 and minor 10 so that gives ya a total of 36 in strength since you start out with 1 strength point.

Mobius Evalon wrote:
Demon27933 wrote:
You can achieve enough strength to push rocks at rank 1 it's called the koisk using the major/minor both on strength as i recall i use to do this back when i started so i could push them since the whites use to torment us newbies back then

The boost for choosing your major is insufficient on its own to reach the 31 strength needed to push boulders out of the way. At any rate, it's not fair for a newbie who just found MLaaS to have to spec his major stat boost into strength just to leave the base through the front door.

When I go to download icon ultima its says: failed to download data (HTTP server returned enexpected status:404 not Found) anything i can do about it?
I have just logged on and tried to play,they blocked off the vault(which i was in)and the green spawn point making your screen go black when you die,you don't re spawn.I think that we should not be able to have rocks in our bases.
Kunark wrote:
The game wasn't TOO bad with a lot of players, but the whole subscription system ruined it and turned it too RPG-like.

I didn't mind the missions too much as even "delivering documents" often came as different experiences for up to around level 10.
Past level 10 it was more about raiding other bases, and protecting yourself, which was fun until Purple and White (subscription) agencies became too superior and ruined the game.
I agree,purple and white are too overpowered,sure you give up a lot but what you gain is way better than what you lose.In short the coders should make the subscription agencies less powerful.

you did a better job when you edied this.
Verok wrote:
Kunark wrote:
The game wasn't TOO bad with a lot of players, but the whole subscription system ruined it and turned it too RPG-like.

I didn't mind the missions too much as even "delivering documents" often came as different experiences for up to around level 10.
Past level 10 it was more about raiding other bases, and protecting yourself, which was fun until Purple and White (subscription) agencies became too superior and ruined the game.
I agree,purple and white are too overpowered,sure you give up a lot but what you gain is way better than what you lose.In short the coders should make the subscription agencies less powerful.


Actually, i think that the subscription agencies should stay same, but non-subscribers should at least be able to get to rank 15, cause otherwise it's like "i have a sub, now i can dominate you, hahaha."
Hooray for the green team!
The game itself is cool, but 1/4 people are mean, which is part of the reason why newbies don't come, since they're like "well, i'm not ganna play this stupid game cause i don't know what to do and the only person on is mean to me." But update should do the trick.
Also there should be an option to go through a tutorial, I was one of the few who actually read the manual that poped up, but it didn't explain everything.
a hidden gem if u ask me... also quit around 04-05...
MLaaS is one of those quaint games that's lost its' appeal as a result of several years of dedicated players learning a neglected game so well that there's no longer any intrigue of role-playing exploration or experimentation. During my play through back in September, the old, detailed memories of the game's inner workings slowly started surfacing again and the initial novel feeling I had was quickly replaced by boredom.
lol true but i was one of those dedicated players