I found Normal quite challenging. Pretty much perfect. 

go and play Painkiller.

Seriously though I would expect a map about plumbing to be base around confined spaces, rather than open-planned horde combat. 

Nobody will play a single player map in DM

What makes you so sure? I do, for example. I also test maps in DM, instead of typing notarget. Unless I'm doing monster placement etc. of course. It's a good way to just look around the map and control traps, lighting etc.

I don't think it is very hard to add DM support.

They barely did when Quake first came out. :)

E1M2, ferrari, etc. 

OK, ALMOST nobody. 

...DM in SP maps is 99.999% pointless. Rubbish design for it and there's 20,000 much better custom DM maps anyway.

Spirit is also right, I thought the challenge was pretty fine on this one. 

me too, don't worry about it. i have this map and like a dozen or more maps from last year i have on my list to get to when i get time. 

i haven't even played the marcher fortress or travail yet! :( 

thing is player skill varies so much around here its hard to balance. 

the gameplay IS great, don't let them influence you, I think we quakers need this kind of gameplay. It's tense and challenging, rarely fast, but the claustrophobic setup helps to create a dangerous atmosphere.

Also I love when a custom sp has dm support. Sometimes I play LAN with friends and we play dm in various sps, especially the id ones, and it's another way of playing quake dm, you can hide and camp, or you can do ambushes, much more than in a "pro-dm" map. 

I agree with you completely. gameplay was interesting, for example sniping Edie cyborg from the rl airduct secret felt almost Deus Ex.

+I like DMing in my ejm2dm level (originally SP level, part of my miniepisode called In Ovo). pace of action is very different there. 

Gameplay was great. Monster setup perfectly matches the architecture. 

than great map, love it! only looked but hope to play it soon 

rarely fast

is the one nitpick I have with maps like this or Ruined Nation. I'm not a monster player, nor have I a good resolution on this f* laptop (I think this is part of it), and most importantly, I have a super short attention span when a game is so... simplistic as Quake. Chewing through 100 Quoth enforcers with standard Quake weapons is a horror to me. I can't live without PM's DOOM shotguns patch anymore, and tbh I think Quoth should do the same, since Quoth's monsters aren't really more intelligent or something, they just have more HP (and more dangerous attacks). This slows the game down especially in a relatively cramped environment with crates etc. if the player doesn't have adequately more powerful weapons.

Veteran players and diehard Quake fanatics might welcome the upscaling of HP and damage without changing monster AI and weapons, and maybe not even notice a real slowdown.

The other nitpick (OK, I have two) is the possibility to get lost, or to explore, or the interconnectedness, or the nonlinearity or however you want to call it. This was already in dm3rmx, where quite a few people got lost, but in this map, with the water and crates, it's increased. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just personally, again, I don't have the patience. I like a well laid out main path that is relatively easy to see. Once I complete a map, I'm much more likely to go back and look for secrets.

As follows logically, I liked the gameplay in Biff's map slightly better and thus am more likely to replay that, in turn getting to know it better, which leads to even more replaying.

To put this into perspective, I like "action RPGs" or FPS-RPGs slightly better than pure FPS normally. If something is pure FPS, to me, it should be kept simple, like DOOM. Putting in more secrets isn't enough to increase the depth of a pure FPS IMO.

This is still a monster level on all other fronts, though. No doubt.

I hope you don't see this as trolling, I did try to be cohesive. 

About the combat style, I think it is objectively a good thing because it is a more specific focus and a more distinctive style of gameplay. I don't know if I like it more or less than normal hardcore action or horde combat or movement-based stuff or what-have-you, but I do like that it's different and that it has a focus... 

I do like that it's different and that it has a focus...

OK. I can see that. 

i got stuck and gave up around 48 monster kills. still waiting for a demo to be put out where i can watch how to beat it. ankh's demo died half way through

really friggin awesome map though, very inspiring! :) 

there is than's demo in this thread 

Every second of it, but not quite as much near the very end. Enforcers were awesome and nicely placed. Less intense gameplay than in Dis_sp6, and no random "BEHIND YOU!" moments. I like horde combat but I can appreciate the time and planning involved with this much more.
Ending reminded me of the tentacles from Half Life. 

In my view, gameplay and monster count/usage was perfect as it did create the desolate feel for me that scar3crow missed. In fact, the map reminded me very much of my early Quake experiences. Being trapped in a strange, threatening, somewhat scary, claustrophobic place with tight damp corridors and dark water everywhere. Playing with the soundtrack really reinforced this, as Spirit also pointed out. Getting lost adds to this feeling, even though I agree it can become somewhat annoying after a while if one is not into this mood. I got lost a couple of times myself - the partially submerged room with the crates seems to be a critical spot in this respect (heh). The one with the GL. After all, it's not so bad really, as long as one follows the arrows and the trail of bodies (than did a good job here - you'll see if you replay the map).
Ultimately (for me), this map is not about action and carnarge but about atmosphere, and making it more difficult would have distracted from this.

How would one go about increasing the difficulty anyway? A larger number of monsters would have felt inappropriate and out of place (when I played an alpha version of this map, it had even fewer monsters which emphasized the focus on exploration and being lost in an unfamilar environment). So the only real alternative would be to turn more of the regular monsters into Quoth enemies which would certainly increase the challenge, but also make gameplay just annoying and destroy the atmosphere or the special appeal of this map.

This has probably been discussed many times. The general skill level of Quake players has increased greatly over the years, so naturally there is a demand for an corresponding increase in challenge. Even many of the reviews at UWF, for example, use a lower monster count or too easy gameplay as a negative criterion. At first I appreciated tougher maps myself (and still do occasionally), but after having played so (too) many maps for Quaddicted, I came to realize that overly hard gameplay is somewhat contrary to what I originally liked about Quake. More often than not it makes playing the map feel like work and either becomes boring or frustrating.

A possible solution could be to make the three skill levels more clearly refined (and make players aware of it). Skill 0 as very easy, one could maybe say realistic in terms of monstercount; skill 1 as mildly challenging (a matter of definition of course, let's say not harder than id skill 2); skill 2 as suited for the hardcore players, though not as insane as NSOE, except maybe if there are enough extra items like quads and pents for the oldschool touch. 

So I'm inline with your opinion regarding the skill setting for may latest map

BTW: I said I loved the map, it is true as I played it on all the skills.. and it is definitely a killer map ! 

http://www.quaketastic.com/upload/files/demos/apsp2_sham.zip

Don't want than to feel underloved in the demo stakes.

I died in this, not sure why, some silly mistake. Completed it straight after. 

you are the little explorer, aren't you? Trying to jump off every possible surface and take all the trick jumps you can is going to lead to a quick death :)

You died because you moved forward a bit too fast in a part of the level where slow advancement is easy. You went and triggered a bunch of enemies then ignored them and continued to proceed, leaving them to come up behind you.

By the way, there is a way to get the rl at the start, but you need to be quick and not kill the guy that is going to give you a hand. Anyway, as you saw later, good things come (easily) to those who wait. 

I died because your bloody lift squashed me and took off 45 health. If it hadn't then I'd have gone into that area with 100% and survived :P. 

Forgot to comment on this earlier.
While DM settings are of course useless in most SP maps, I still think it's nice to have them - however basic - for the sake of completeness and, again, oldschoolness.
Back in the days, pretty much all SP maps had DM settings. I doubt many people ever played most custom maps in this mode, though, except for the authors maybe. However, as has been mentioned, at least the id maps were played in DM sometimes for casual players didn't have the skills they have today (and the notion of how a proper DM map has to be like in terms of layout, flow etc hadn't been developed this clearly). It's also about the number of players, of course - 1on1 doesn't work in most maps (will be boring - by today's standards).
Still, I you want to feel whole, take a day off and place some additional items/teleporters/spawnflags, it isn't that much more work really. Plus you can play the map with the DMSP mod. 

the exploration was almost always good, i only got truly confused once, which was where to go right before getting the silver key (the ladder went up to two floors, and i went all the way up, which merely led back to an earlier part of the level; i didn't realize at first that halfway up was where i should be going.)

I got the rocket launcher right at the start using trick jumps on the crates.

The message about "all these cells, must be a lightning gun" was exactly what i WAS thinking a second earlier :)

This was as well put together and vertical as apsp1, and makes me wonder sometimes how you keep the player's route figured out when staring at it in the editor :)

Details were excellent, many rooms were screenshot-worthy.