That's far from the standard; your standards are set way too high. It doesn't have to be insane.
The standard is decent graphics (no classic or anything like that), well put-together dungeons, and decent musical choice. I can't believe, though, that people put ... TRICK DESIGN over DUNGEON design. It just makes no sense to me. Especially since ZC is a dungeon editor, not fancy RPG editor
MMDWR's sewers and power plant bored me in the fact that they were monotonous and just plain boring; there was no foundation to keep the dungeons fun. And... Armageddon Quest seems ridiculously hard to me. Sabotage Dragoon was great in the fact that it had dungeons with a ton of puzzles and ways to move around. It's like one huge ridiculous puzzle... take a look at the Mud Monkey Dungeon in demo 2: it was brilliantly put-together, though I kinda wanted to give up after the FREAKING HARD boss. Dreams of Yesterday had fantastic dungeons too, in the fact that you could raise/lower the water level. I want to see more "freeform" puzzles that aren't just ordinary block puzzles, but some that have to do with objects and stuff in real life. I also enjoy block puzzles if they're well put-together and feel more like actual puzzles and not "push random blocks here and there"
That's my idea of standard quest design. I only play quests that are well put-together dungeon wise. If you played Realms in Peril, any of you... it was a brilliant example of this.
There's no reason to be rude, now, Dragonboy. I enjoyed the old-school style. Besides, if it weren't for the old-school style, we wouldn't HAVE ZC in the first place. Nintendo would probably laugh out loud at most of our quests
A little difficulty is good for us hardcore players who can beat Darknuts with our eyes closed You kinda have to be "on your toes" enemy wise. Though, I admit; t'was a tad difficult. Maybe OUCH! should have saved the really hard stuff for later in the game.