Hardest and/or most difficult map and/orWAD?

As the subject states, what is the general consensus or opinion about the hardest Doom map or WAD? I'm excluding joke maps or WADS because reasons. Is there a map or WAD so difficult that it's considered impossible or near impossible?

In my experience, Chillax and Okuplok hold that title. Though given that most Chillax maps are plagiarised from other sources (mostly phmlspd) I guess that could be discounted..

Another funny aspect of this, the hardest part is when you get stuck. Wandering around a big level where all the enemies are dead. But that's probably not what people are thinking of, probably thinking combat.

So technically, a map where it's completely unclear how to get to the end of the level is harder than a level with insane nightmare combat.

PsychoGoatee said:

Another funny aspect of this, the hardest part is when you get stuck. Wandering around a big level where all the enemies are dead. But that's probably not what people are thinking of, probably thinking combat.

So technically, a map where it's completely unclear how to get to the end of the level is harder than a level with insane nightmare combat.

I suppose you're right, in that respect.

Eris Falling said:

In my experience, Chillax and Okuplok hold that title. Though given that most Chillax maps are plagiarised from other sources (mostly phmlspd) I guess that could be discounted..

I'm not familiar with either of those WADs (?). Could I find those on Youtube from someone who knows how to play?

I'm not sure Okuplok is even possible without multiplayer stuff like unlimited lives. I couldn't find any videos of it on Youtube. I had the idea of doing a MP-playthrough with some of the ZDaemon TNS gang and recording it, though we haven't got around to that yet.

As for Chillax, this should tell you all you need to know :P

Eris Falling said:

I'm not sure Okuplok is even possible without multiplayer stuff like unlimited lives. I couldn't find any videos of it on Youtube. I had the idea of doing a MP-playthrough with some of the ZDaemon TNS gang and recording it, though we haven't got around to that yet.

As for Chillax, this should tell you all you need to know :P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncQf4CClZnk

Wow, that was awesome; thanks for sharing. Now, I want to see him do that again, only this time doing a Tyson run. Ha.

PsychoGoatee said:

Another funny aspect of this, the hardest part is when you get stuck. Wandering around a big level where all the enemies are dead. But that's probably not what people are thinking of, probably thinking combat.

So technically, a map where it's completely unclear how to get to the end of the level is harder than a level with insane nightmare combat.

i'd rather call that frustrating/boring than hard. and unfun. i still haven't beat Eternal Doom because of this fact.

Doomhuntress said:

i'd rather call that frustrating/boring than hard. and unfun. i still haven't beat Eternal Doom because of this fact.

So Eternal Doom would not be worth checking out on Youtube then?

If your looking for some fun stuff to watch, id highly recommend playing demos from the dsda demo archive or the speed demos forum on this site using prboom for the best quality viewing experience. But if you must use YouTube, search for "Doom UV-max" for the best category of stuff.

Nochance
Sunder
Degrassi
Supernib
Holy hell
Deus vult
Sf2011
Sf2012
Stardate 20x6
Swim with the whales
Journey to hell
Survive in hell

are all good stuff. The later maps of Speed of Doom, Scythe, Scythe 2, Resurgence, Sunlust (just came out!) Hellbound, Going Down, and Plutonia 2 are all good watches too!

40oz said:

If your looking for some fun stuff to watch, id highly recommend playing demos from the dsda demo archive or the speed demos forum on this site using prboom for the best quality viewing experience. But if you must use YouTube, search for "Doom UV-max" for the best category of stuff.

Nochance
Degrassi
Supernib
Holy hell
Deus vult
Sf2011
Sf2012
Stardate 20x6
Swim with the whales
Journey to hell
Survive in hell

are all good stuff. The later maps of Speed of Doom, Scythe, Scythe 2, Resurgence, Sunlust (just came out!) Hellbound, Going Down, and Plutonia 2 are all good watches too!

Yeah, it's Youtube-only for me; I will definitely check these out, thanks for the suggestions.
Side note/question: Is Degrassi named after that Canadian show? lol

TimeOfDeath is a funny guy :)

Chillax looks like yet another NUTS.WAD-esque slaughter map. Run in circles until the baddies kill each other for you. Yawn.

Even Nochance, despite the apparently overwhelming start, allows you to simply run past everybody and take your time somewhere else on the map, it doesn't force you to make a stand right then and there.

A truly hard map (as in combat-hard, not puzzles/switch hunting), must contain elements of ammo/health/armor starvation, player movement restraining (the only "fair" way to take away the player's mobility advantage), no chance to abuse/fuck around with architecture for cover/disruption, frequent ambushes, and a tendency not to forgive even minor mistakes. In other words, it must be designed to preclude almost everything on this list :-p

However, a truly hard map must NOT have an "easier" way out by adopting a particular strategy: then the map will only be hard for newbies that don't know the tricks yet. No, a hard map must be hard for everyone, everytime, no matter how many times he's played it or even completed it, and no particular strategy must be too effective.

Maes said:

Chillax looks like yet another NUTS.WAD-esque slaughter map. Run in circles until the baddies kill each other for you. Yawn.

Even Nochance, despite the apparently overwhelming start, allows you to simply run past everybody and take your time somewhere else on the map, it doesn't force you to make a stand right then and there.

A truly hard map (as in combat-hard, not puzzles/switch hunting), must contain elements of ammo/health/armor starvation, player movement restraining (the only "fair" way to take away the player's mobility advantage), no chance to abuse/fuck around with architecture for cover/disruption, frequent ambushes, and a tendency not to forgive even minor mistakes. In other words, it must be designed to preclude almost everything on this list :-p

However, a truly hard map must NOT have an "easier" way out by adopting a particular strategy: then the map will only be hard for newbies that don't know the tricks yet. No, a hard map must be hard for everyone, everytime, no matter how many times he's played it or even completed it, and no particular strategy must be too effective.

I completely agree; not slaughter map-y, but genuine difficulty.

Some of the original IWAD maps actually have the "right" stuff in this respect: even after 20+ years of "seasoning", there are still traps that can catch you off guard or spots where you cannot afford to get too cocky. And they don't need to throw 1000 monsters against the player to achieve that.

Chillax, The only maps i could beat were MAP01 and MAP16 so it's the Hardest for me .

Maes said:

a truly hard map must NOT have an "easier" way out by adopting a particular strategy: then the map will only be hard for newbies that don't know the tricks yet. No, a hard map must be hard for everyone, everytime, no matter how many times he's played it or even completed it, and no particular strategy must be too effective.

This is a fucking astute observation - I hate when a "hard" map suddenly becomes a total breeze when you find the "strategic shortcut" the author put in.. This kind of thing can be fun in doeses, but things become stale and formulaic when it's overdone.

Maes said:

Chillax looks like yet another NUTS.WAD-esque slaughter map. Run in circles until the baddies kill each other for you. Yawn.

Even Nochance, despite the apparently overwhelming start, allows you to simply run past everybody and take your time somewhere else on the map, it doesn't force you to make a stand right then and there.

Let's see your demos for these if they're not hard.

Especially Nochance.

Top slaughtermaps are hard, but personally I prefer the kind of hard presented in skepland. With the notable exception of endlessly revived turret chainers, heh. There's something charming about one cyberdemon being a harder bully than an entire sea of monsters. This finesse speaks to me.

The most difficult wad in the sense of technical/movement skill I can recall is probably rj_slab. Some of those jumps were way too frustrating even for me.

Chillax is a disgrace of humanity and you should feel bad for bringing it up in any sort of matter other than exceptional shitmaps. Describing it as 'hard' would be giving it a benefit of being playable, albeit difficult. The wad is none of those, it's untested and unplayable.

Maes said:

Even Nochance, despite the apparently overwhelming start, allows you to simply run past everybody and take your time somewhere else on the map, it doesn't force you to make a stand right then and there.

Nope. Wrong.

j4rio said:

Chillax is a disgrace of humanity and you should feel bad for bringing it up in any sort of matter other than exceptional shitmaps. Describing it as 'hard' would be giving it a benefit of being playable, albeit difficult. The wad is none of those, it's untested and unplayable.

Brofist.

The first 11 maps of Hell Revealed II. They were harder than the fucking slaughtermaps.

What about the two Combat Shock series?

j4rio said:

Chillax is none of those, it's untested and unplayable.

I've seen videos for people beating it's maps, and also Played with some who actually finished them, how can it be unplayable ?

j4rio said:

Nope. Wrong.

But that's exactly what the posted vid for it shows, which is precisely the kind of shortcut-strategy I was talking about.

@Cynical: for the same exact reason it's perfectly futile for me to waste my time training and making demos of maps that have already been "broken" by others, especially in a non-FDA mode: if there is an optimal strategy to a map, given enough time and practice almost anybody can discover it. Hell, why not copy the existing strategies for it right away? Without the added pressure of a FDA/unknown map, it becomes a matter of executing a choreography, rather than genuine improvisation and adaptation.

And yes, I believe there's a difference between "COMPET-N hard" and "FDA hard". They require different skills, mindset and preparation.

Maes said:

But that's exactly what the posted vid for it shows, which is precisely the kind of shortcut-strategy I was talking about.

Yes, you can try leaving the first area but anywhere you go you'll be met just with more opposition and dead ends, emphasis on the dead. The vid in question took over 2 weeks of devising at least slightly survivable strategy and getting it pulled off in one go, even though author of said video had complete indepth knowledge of it beforehand.

DMGUYDZ64 said:

I've seen videos for people beating it's maps, and also Played with some who actually finished them, how can it be unplayable ?

The creation process of chillax was basically taking pre-made layouts from other, completely different maps, filling them to the brink with monsters and calling it a day. Anything that resembles playability is just a remnant of the old map before it was bastardized with unnecessary monsters. You can get a similar wad simply by changing all monsters in doom2 to revenants, archviles or cybers and voila, you've got your brand new chillax sequel ready to go!

Maes said:

it becomes a matter of executing a choreography, rather than genuine improvisation and adaptation.

There's a large difference between being able to do something consistently, and thinking you can do something at least once because you watched someone else do it. btw you might like ggg maps if you haven't checked those out already. His MO was pretty much to make situations where doom RNG had a large effect on how everything played out, so each replay is "different" in a sense (often via how monsters pathed through chaotic and elaborate environments).

also at this point isn't chillax balanced around having multiple players and respawning items, etc? I recall watching some folks play through it that way on zandro and many of the maps seemed to require a decent amount of strategy/coordination.

Maes said:

@Cynical: for the same exact reason it's perfectly futile for me to waste my time training and making demos of maps that have already been "broken" by others, especially in a non-FDA mode: if there is an optimal strategy to a map, given enough time and practice almost anybody can discover it. Hell, why not copy the existing strategies for it right away? Without the added pressure of a FDA/unknown map, it becomes a matter of executing a choreography, rather than genuine improvisation and adaptation.

By this logic, it would be "easy" for me to go watch a SWtW03 UV-max demo and complete a UV-max run myself with a similar time.

It should be obvious that watching someone do something doesn't make it easy to do yourself.

Ribbiks said:

There's a large difference between being able to do something consistently, and thinking you can do something at least once because you watched someone else do it.

I'm not saying that playing at the level of a COMPET-N master doesn't take skill: if there's any widely acknowledged definition of what makes a "good" Doom player, or even the "best", who therefore can beat "hard" maps, it's precisely that of the accomplished COMPET-N demo maker (also because the result of his hard work is a re-playable demo anyone can see).

However, this doesn't change the fact that at the end of the day, those demos are the result of painstaking trial & error, close study, micromanaging, spot optimization, constant refining etc., so in the end the skill of those COMPET-N-ers may be compared to that of a master pianist or violinist executing a well-known composition, but not to that of e.g. a genius jazz improviser or street artist, if you'd prefer a musical/artistic analogy.

In Dooming terms however, the analogy for improvisation and "survivalist" skill would be FDA demos, a category which sadly doesn't have many aficionados. But IMO it's more suited to demonstrating "real" skill than proving that one can obsess over shaving 1 tic here and there from a well-known map.