What was the first map you played that completely broke your will to live?

[LadyMistDragon]

This is rather hyperbolic, but I guess something like Cybersky where you get overwhelmed by Revenants in the same long pool with all the Cyberdemons on platforms and realizing this fight was not intended keyboard-only whatsoever? Yeah....but that doesn't happen these days. don't have time for difficult stuff mostly.

[sandwedge]

E4M6 Sanctuary of Filth from No end in sight.  The way id did series was one of the first set of pwads I dove into so when I got to Episode 4 of this it started to go beyond my skill level, and especially this one.  It was really hard and cryptic and I eventually broke down and watched a video on how to get through it.  But I was pissed at the time, thinking "this isn't the way id did AT ALL" lol.  I don't remember anything else giving me near that much trouble, though I remember the map with a bunch of Masterminds in lava turned into a slideshow with Beautiful Doom's interaction between BFG balls and lava.  Still, it prepared me to go into tougher community wads so I look back on it positively.

[Varis Alpha]

Excalibur from Eternal Doom.

 

i still don't know how to beat all of it without looking up the walkthrough on the Doom Wiki. i can sort of fumble through the later Bob Evans and Jim Flynn maps, but not this one.

 

map29 from CC1 too. it stopped me dead in my tracks the first time i got to it.

[Ex Inferis]

There was this castle map in Eternall.wad where after killing everyone i got frustrated wandering around the empty castle for about an hour, unable to find the path towards the exit. It was the first time i quit a wad without finishing.

That, and the Doom 2 Icon of Sin. Was unable to wrap my head around the fact that the best game i'd known had the most annoying, anticlimactic ending. To this date, i refuse to play IOS maps

[RHhe82]

8 hours ago, Budoka said:

That seems to be a common sentiment. Demonic Hordes and Dark Dome, while very intimidating, are ultimately satisfying, while Stench of Evil, which seems to tone things down at first glance, well "manages to be more exhausting than either of them" to quote MtPain27. I felt the same way when I first went through Alien Vendetta.

 

[…]

 

One that remains relevant: "Gear Up" from Sunlust. I just... I don't understand. Also Pale Monument from Sunder. If you know the map, you know the moment...

 

Dehydration from Eviternity has also tempered my motivation a few times, but with that one it's mostly for the wrong reasons. Luckily, I knew powering through the tedium would be worth it. 

Exactly. To clarify my take AV MAP25-26, I too did find them satisfying in the end, even if they were clearly above my skillgrade. 
 

I almost also mentioned Eviternity’s Dehydration, but that (along with Anagnorisis… or something like that) is a bit different; it didn’t break my will to live, but rather drained me physically and further slowed down my Eviternity run which I’ve been playing for a better part of the year as of now. Hopefully these two were the longest maps on offer.

 

Gear Up on HNTR wasn’t a willbreaker :P But I admit, on UV it was a tough cookie for me (and incidentally the furthest I’ve got in Sunlust on UV).

[Budoka]

4 hours ago, RHhe82 said:

(and incidentally the furthest I’ve got in Sunlust on UV).

Same here!

 

I actually love Anagnorisis, once I start playing it I usually finish it back to front. It's lengthy and difficult to be sure, but damn is it a work of genius. That one and Dehydration are indeed the longest two maps in Eviternity by a mile. There are a couple more long form levels after that, but neither of them is quite that big, and neither one is as boring as Dehydration (the complete opposite in fact).

[Steveb1000]

Map 28 of Epic 2.

 

It's difficult, labyrinthine, and I didn't understand what I had to do to progress.

[SPG]

TNT's "Mill" not because it was particularly hard but because to progress to the climax requires asinine thinking, and I know there are more absurd examples out there but wandering around a big open empty space not having a clue what to do, and then finally looking it up and discovering you shoot a random wall... why were so many pre-21st century game designers in love with the idea of mandatory secrets/puzzles you'd have to mind-read to figure out? Does a person who succeessfully solves and enjoys these types of game situations on the regular actually exist? It's not something I miss with old game design in any case.

[Andromeda]

23 hours ago, aika said:

I don't remember the first one, but I remember when I was doing a saveless uv-max of Sunlust MAP30: God Machine and died at the final pyramid archvile fight... twice

 

(This fight is like 1 hour into the map if you're playing at a casual speed like I was)

Damn that sucks, I remember that fight being really accessible but maybe I was just lucky.

[RileyXY1]

MAP31 of Back to Saturn X Episode 1. I hated that map so much that I decided to skip it and pistol start MAP16.

[TuomasGaming]

Mephisto's Maosoleum (MEPHISTO.WAD) Master Levels for DOOM 2

 

First off, It took forever for me to find out what to do in the first area.

Once I got to the Icon of Sin room, It also took me forever to kill all of the Mancubi.

When I did eventually kill all of them, nothing happened. It turns out, I was playing on MAP15, (I can't remember entirely) when I was supposed to be playing on MAP07. I spent about half an hour trying to figure out what to do after killing the Mancubi.

I was playing a wad called MASTERLEVELS.WAD. It was all of the Master Levels in one wad, because I didn't want to load each wad separately.

[yakfak]

tbh nothing really stops me in my tracks, i'm not afraid to cheat or skip a map, lol. the linear order that Doom 2 maps arrive in basically stop you mixing & matching what you wanna play with what yr receiving unless you're prepared to idclev around, change the music up, give yourself a berserk pack for fun etc. otoh I like being STUCK in a map, just having to work out what I'm missing about the progression, it's fights I get bored with

 

i beat Epic MAP28 legit though, that's a brilliant map and worth playing properly. whole map set is basically a big Eternal Doom tribute but especially Ogdoad

[cannonball]

A slightly different answer, Wormhell (Map12 from THT threnody). I have played harder and longer maps, but entire experience was just soul crushing on a level I have never experienced before or since. It didn’t help that it followed two absolutely stellar maps but still. 
Whilst it is easy to dump on it, the map looks fantastic and clearly a lot of time and effort went into it. However the result was something I absolutely loathed.

[Kokoro Hane]

The title is a bit dramatic, but....

 

The archvile maze in Plutonia.

 

I've never played any of Final Doom from start to finish, just random maps, and my brother recommended for me to play that map ON A PISTOL START. Because evidently he enjoyed playing it that way. Ugh..... never again.... how he memorized that maze I will never know but I kept getting lost... and cooked....

[Andromeda]

9 hours ago, Kokoro Hane said:

The title is a bit dramatic, but....

 

The archvile maze in Plutonia.

 

I've never played any of Final Doom from start to finish, just random maps, and my brother recommended for me to play that map ON A PISTOL START. Because evidently he enjoyed playing it that way. Ugh..... never again.... how he memorized that maze I will never know but I kept getting lost... and cooked....

If it makes you feel better I'd wager most players just aimlessly run through the maze until they stumble across the keys/switches :)

[Azure_Horror]

I completely erased the offending map from my memory.

 

So, I guess, I come here empty-handed...

[Serum]

On 9/25/2022 at 4:17 PM, Skullhacker said:

Doom Eternal : Super Gore Nest Master Level

Simply ow

 

Same. Even after TAG1 on nightmare, I still wasn't prepared

[aika]

On 9/26/2022 at 10:23 PM, Andromeda said:

Damn that sucks, I remember that fight being really accessible but maybe I was just lucky.

Yeah the fight is actually relatively easy, I just got unlucky and possibly too nervous :)

[The BMFG]

my good pal @WhatTheDuckXD was streaming me a map we found on idgames on discord, it was so fucking bad. he couldn't find the exit until he accidentally humped a random wall and it suddenly opened up revealing the exit.

[scalliano]

SPAWN v1.0 (SPAWN10.WAD). Not only is it so heavily ACS-scripted that it literally only works with 1 ancient version of GZDoom, but the level design is so obnoxious that it actually landed me with my custom title.

[SFFlowerBoy]

"Dehydration" in eviternity. It was the longest doom map I have ever played and bombards you with traps after traps after traps. I spent days playing this not because it's all that long, but because the many death I suffered in that map. It was so agonizingly long that I agitated when it would finally end.k

[TheMightyWhoosh]

Mill from TNT, as it took FOREVER to work out I had to shoot the ‘switch’ in order to raise that little platform in the computer/tech area. 
 

Despite this, Mill is still one of my favourite IWAD maps.  

[arrotive]

for me it was refinery, its not exactly the hardest but it fucking sucks

[Toastd]

It's pretty basic, but my ill-fated attempt to do Plutonia UV-fast on pistol start without saves ended at MAP04. I think I died about 40 times before I gave up. The hitscanners were just absolutely ruthless in the central area - several attempts ended as soon as I lowered the starting platform with me getting instantly perforated by shotgunners. Add to that the fact that I actually forgot where I was supposed to go after the room with the barons and the nukage... Not fun times.

[Caged]

[Removed]

Edited October 16, 2022 by Caged

[Cammy]

When it comes to playing Doom, I'm unfortunately stubborn as a bull. I pretty much never start a map over once I've sunk more than 10 in-game minutes into it, even if I've saved myself into a corner or it's looking to be beyond my skill level. Hell, just today I had to savescum my way out of Resurgence MAP30 because by the time I'd killed everything I only had 7 health left, and most of the map is boiling in 10-damage floor at the other end of which lay the only remaining rad suit in the level. Ouch.

 

Yet somehow, only one map has beaten me so badly that I've had no choice but to give up completely, and to this day I still haven't gone back to it to get even. That map is Umbreion Nils from Tangerine Nightmare. God almighty, it's a test.

[Skullhacker]

Add Map14 of Hell Revealed to my list.

Hell Revealed is kicking my ass

[NiGHTS108]

Probably Hell Revealed II MAP28

[RoastDoom]

I just got done with Ancient Aliens Map 24 - Culture Shock. That last fight(the one with the 5/6 arch viles + dozens of pinkies and imps stampeding towards you, plus 4 mancubus sentries all perched in their alcoves) left me exhausted and demoralized. 

[Addemup]

I'm not sure that I can confidently say if I've gotten to that point yet. I've beaten both TNT and Plutonia on Not Too Rough (albeit with mouselook and some save-scumming), but now that I'm going to try taking Doom a little bit more seriously it'll only be a matter of time.

 

EDIT: I just spent 45 minutes trying and failing to beat Halls of the Damned. Looks like there's a tough road ahead

Edited October 12, 2022 by Addemup