wads that used to be considered difficult

[little egg]

what mapsets used to be seen as among the most diffucult but aren't really that hard by today standards?

[Gaia74]

Plutonia and master of levels were very complicated when they were released, and even for years before the already known Slaughter maps came out

[galileo31dos01]

Any popular or ex-quintessential wad of the 90's and early 00's, because the range of difficulty is nowadays measured first on how much your brain must work to overcome a case, be it a monster fight or a real puzzle, and then pull out a solution(s), often showing the player in advance what's going to face, or just not wasting their time, whereas before it used to be more about increasing quantity and depriving the player from fundamental capabilities, with the occasional sudden "gotcha!" death trap or boxing the player in something inescapable at first try, and well, engine limitations aren't out of this. Of course, I'm speaking of the most distinctive aspects, old maps are not all about cheap traps and new-age maps don't need to be like math books, as we get that difficulty depends on the individual, but it is a fact that the more you are demanded, the harder it is considered by popular opinion. 

 

Pick Hell Revealed 2, which is what I'm currently dealing with for the second time. I personally don't think it's even that hard, in fact it's far away from an imaginary top 10, where there goes plenty releases of this last(!) decade and maybe a few from late 00's. However, one of the recurrent tropes is to overwhelm the player's near lack of space til there's nothing else to do, that goes with understanding that a mean to improve the monster's threat is to give it the advantage of cornering you in close quarters, although HR2 sometimes crosses the "fairness" line, it is still something mappers do nowadays in many many different and more elegant ways.

 

Now let's see Eternal Doom, while it does have around 3 or 4 actual brain teasers, most of your time is spent looking up for camouflaged switches and what they do, and yet it's either highly acclaimed or hated for the tons of puzzles that are not puzzles, no a tiny switch behind a spiderweb isn't a fricking puzzle. But go figure how many hours it took players to beat map 30 without the possibility to look up for the solutions on the internet. At that time sure ED must have been one of the hardest wads to beat I think, but not too long ago I played REKKR which featured a secret map that was nothing else but math games you might find in magazines, something I just would never expect to see in a vanilla wad, and imo it puts any ED "puzzle" back to elementary school.

 

HR1, AV, Scythe's last levels, etc, have been studied from head to toes so if you struggle there's a wide spectrum of proofs of how to beat them all on any difficulty, and fact is those don't put your brain to work that hard like many boom wads of the current era. Even old rare specimens like Number one Kill the next generation, which is often a stomachache on UV, has obvious skips to most of the gotchas.

 

I can't stand this stupid fly flying in front of me anymore so I'm leaving here now.

[GarrettChan]

Best example would be Plutonia. Still, until today, there are so many people complaining the unfairness in Plutonia.

[Gokuma]

doom1.wad

[Toilet_Wine_Connoisseur]

Thy Flesh Consumed.

 

It was a pain in the ass first time I played it, now its the only Episode of the original I still enjoy playing

[seed]

Plutonia, Thy Flesh Consumed, AV, and HR are probably the best examples of this. Up to this day some players still complain about Plutonia being difficult.

 

TFC, well, more like its openers which are on par aith the difficulty of some maps in Plutonia, after the first 2 maps it gets easier and easier.

 

AV and HR, well, that's self explanatory. Granted, even today they are still considered difficult, but they don't hold a candle to something like Deus Vult or Sunder.