Originally Posted by
shockeroo
Difficult. Make or break effects like dooming, wishes, more than +/-2 to stats and anything that grants/removes more than ~2 corruptions feel like they should definitely require something more like a handle, a kick or a prayer. However, if you can ID the statue and just remember or look up whether it's a doom or a wish the whole thing becomes a bit trivial.
Isn't that what happens with everything else? Statues are no exception here, people find something they are not sure about -> wiki or IGB.
For new players who are actually interested in the content, I'd say this would still be worthwhile, but for oldies such as myself, there is nothing new here.
I have experienced every statue effect at this point. Every other feature in the game is otherwise interaction dependent, even unknown traps, the threat of which is mitigated by relevant skills, wands, class powers etc.
Statues are completely outside of that - there is no physical way to determine even a range of potential effects upon stepping on that tile that contains one.
That is in principle bad design.
Honestly I don't think these huge effect statues are a great feature as designed. I'd much rather have a statue with a 50-50 chance of doom or wish and you pray to see which you get. But given they were designed by crowd founders that's not really an option.
No disagreement from me here.
I don't have a good solution to this one. Maybe a warning prompt before you step onto a square with ANY statue? "These legendary statues are said to sometimes cause great aid or harm. Are you sure you wish to approach?"
I'm undecided about this. From one perspective, those would be needless extra prompts, while on the other hand statues are not that common to really make a big issue out of it.
I think the question boils down to interaction, just stepping close to a statue (as in: on the same tile) should not cause any effects because it would be a precedent.
No other feature in the game causes an instant effect in a similar situation. Water, npcs, altars, traps, shops, staircases etc - all of these require a deliberate action aside from movement.
If there is interaction possible after only moving, it's perhaps in the case of altars and being sacrificed by monsters. Then again, altars and their functions are widely known and explained in the manual.
They can be seen from afar and there is no ambiguity here. Statues however, present an arbitrary automatic effect which can often be highly undesirable for the PC without interaction - that is the problem.