One of the things I haven't seen anyone do is describe a map like, let's say, Sunlust m20, purely in terms of the feelings it aims to create (and succeeds at creating). In fact you might be part of both audiences (like I am). (Usually that is at least true for its target audience, or for members of the target audience that are open to the map's chosen mechanics (there is still a lot of room for subjectivity), even if isn't true for anyone else.) If one is type to enjoy modern "challenging but fair" wads (like BTSX and Vanguard), with their intensity and all the attending feelings they produce, they likely already know, by analogy, this feeling as it's created by many "super challenging and not quite ostensibly fair" wads in those who like that thing. Imo, above all, a good Really Hard Map, to me, feels good to play. It's because the fights are pleasurable in themselves on a more basal level.Ībstract strategy and abstract skill testing ends up factoring into such things on a secondary basis, due to opportunism (the possibility for it is conveniently right there), and probably because it kind of has to at times (a super intense fight that is completely anti-strategic also likely deprives the player of agency, which is not very conducive to fun), but I wouldn't consider it the top-layer appeal for me (at best it's part of a 1a-1b tandem). A hard map wasn't a wall you had to surmount to "prove yourself." I think that philosophy was why, in addition to the korens and Ribbiks and Dotws of the world, people who normally didn't play challenging maps would show up with praise in my threads. I sometimes boot up wads like Sunlust and Stardate 20x7 - and when I do it's mostly not because I want to do something hard, or test skills, like someone doing a strenuous workout or, worse, eating their daily roughage. The intensity was always predominantly a means of creating strong emotions, like the slow burn of oppression where you have to walk a tightrope and get to breathe cathartic release when you are done, or like the sheer thrill of chaos like a flame that consumes you, or something in between or different altogether. When I first got into mapping, the main appeal of hard Doom was crafting pleasurable feelings and adrenaline rushes (among other comparable things), which is a philosophy I still carry with me. (I think I probably ended up going with that explanation myself a couple times.) In the discussions of slaughterwads that would crop up over and over years ago, I think the whole Doom-as-chess angle supporters would push, justifying the appeal of harder maps with abstract notions of strategy and all that, has painted a misleading image of "challenge Doom" as something just very abstract and technical and removed from actual emotion. This is something I needed to fill in because I realized that it might not be widely known. For players of rd's skill level, I imagine they must feel like short, energizing workouts . The three maps I've discussed so far all feel something like musical etudes they're all pretty small and quick (if you can stay alive), and they serve to test specific skills in contained settings.
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