This is because the other features in the game are uncertain even upon initial inestigation. A player isn't punished for picking up a ring of doom before they put it on, but they also don't get told it's a ring of doom - it'll be a 'black ring' or a 'ruby ring' or 'coral ring' or something.
The statue, on the other hand, is identified (assuming wiki access or previous games played) as soon as it's stepped upon, which is why stepping on it has to have a chance of a negative effect. Otherwise, it's like drinking from a pool and the game saying 'this is a permainvis pool, are you sure you want to drink from it'? It makes the 'gamble' meaningless.

The ring of doom [or any other] can be identified, traps can be detected, but statues not. It's like saying monster art should not be shown cause the player will know to flee from steel golem with a low level char.
I'd prefer my statue not to be undetectable "pool effect" by the way.

I don't have a problem with "Doom" on a statue becoming an effect that only hits you once, total, and then you learn that *that* statue dooms you. It'll still get you once, and then not again.
I certainly haven't gone swimming in the ToTHK more than once.

The problem right now is that I have no reason to ever step on a statue. If I have an early character then the negative effects might just kill me. If it's a late-game character then the positive effects don't really matter... so why do it? Pools at least have a potential large upside even for late-game characters (valuable intrinsics) and they have a way to mitigate their downsides (previously storing blink dog corpses etc)

The only reason I can ever think to use statues right now is if I really want to save Khelly and I've exhausted my pool options. Then I might want to revisit all old statues in the hope that they're a wish.

And that means they're kind of a wasted gameplay feature. Removing the worst "step-on" negative effects (while still allowing them to hit me if I'm unfamiliar with the statue and do the wrong thing) would help a lot. Then I'd be excited to explore each new statue and see what it did, because I'd get the chance to learn that "oh, the statue of X does Y". Right now I never learn anything about them because I ignore them all.

Harwin, the problem is that you DON'T know if it's the dooming statue or not.
You only find out when you step on the tile and the effect is applied.
Before finding said statue, you'd have to actively avoid ALL statues, because every single one could be THAT dooming statue.
Quite an overkill.

I don't have a problem with dooming from a statue either but only if it's not applied just when you step on the tile.
Make it prayer/spell/kick/handle dependent, whatever, but not instant on-step effect because that's unfair.
I don't even mind the description being vague, though it's not unreasonable to expect at least some hint at the nature of a statue before any interaction is undertaken.
No such thing exists. You may very well be forced to step on a statue tile because all other tiles are occupied and then poof, you are doomed, even if you were just passing through, totally not interested in doing anything about the statue.
You get penalized just for being there.

Yeah I know it works by step-on, and I object to it. That's why I said I don't step on statues *ever* if I can :)
I don't actually even know what the statue looks like(and I don't want to know. If this ever gets changed I want to be able to discover statue uses by myself). I've heard that there's a statue that dooms by step-on, so I stopped stepping on them.

I don't think this is true. A wish is great for all characters. There are statues that give massive permanent stat increases, statues that give you murderous weapons, statues that give you spell knowledge, statues that give you new skills...

Look at stepping on a stature like drinking from a pool. It's a game, sometimes, it will doom you and you'll have to make it a mission. Sometimes, it will pretty much kill you (like aging from pools can). It's a gamble, and it's not always going to be the right choice.
Allowing the player to identify the effect before risking anything would take all the decision making away from the exercise, and take away exactly what I find interesting about them in the first place! They're one-use pool-type that *sometimes* give you an 'are you sure' option in the form of a prayer or a kick to confirm.

Oh my god haha that's cruel.

The thing about this is that it won't pretty much kill you, 17 corruptions is a death sentence to almost every character. If it's too early in the game then you won't be able to deal with the negative side effects and if it's later in the game it will just kill you because you probably have a few corruptions already. I agree with keeping statues how they are pretty much, but a death sentence to any character no matter where they are is very harsh. I might be biased because that statue killed me, but it's still ridiculous.

Yeah, 'gain 17 corruptions' is pretty much just death. 'Increase corruptions to 17' would at least not autokill characters with existing corruptions.

I think the right question is whether people would have designed these horrible statue effects if they knew other people would need to step on them blindly.
If you looking for hardcore experience I recommend taking up Zen monk [each time you poke someone it can be goblin or dopler king, so much gamble] instead of recommending some horrors for the main game.

I disagree. You're not allowed to identify the effect before risking - you only get some vague information about the statue itself which more than often, doesn't really give you any specifics about the effects.
Of course, nothing stops you from looking up the description and finding out that way but that's not really something unique to statues, it's universal for all game elements where the player is uncertain of the outcome.
If you don't know what a particular pool effect does, you can check the IGB or the wiki.
If you don't know the effects of eating a corpse, check the IGB or the wiki.

If you step on a pool tile, the effect is not applied; for statues, step-on is often equal to instantaneous effect and that is wrong.
Statues can be seen from afar and thus the PC should always be able to describe what they see upon 'l'ooking, otherwise it's an extremely poor game design, completely breaking the immersion.
You can look at any monster from as far away as your view range permits and you get a detailed description.
The same should be true for every statue, with no exceptions.

Also note that when I see an un-ID'd ring of Djinni Summoning on the ground, I have a pretty good idea it might be a ring of Djinni Summoning based on the unID'd description.

That's similar to finding the "wish" statue. Since I can find powerful items randomly on the ground, I don't have a big problem with occasionally getting a "safe" free wish from a statue. It's not going to come up that often.

I don't think of fixed effect statues like pools in that regard, I think of them like items I could find. As I learn the game (from player experience) I get better at picking the right statues, as I get better at using the right items.

I'd just like to note that you don't get 17 corruptions from standing on a statue. You risk getting a random number o corruptions when you kick a certain statue, which can be identified by standing on it.

The only thing you really risk by standing on a statue is dooming. A *tiny* chance of getting a very removable debuff.
In return, you get access to every single positive effect statues can offer, sin'ce you'll only be kicking or praying for the effects you want. You get wishes, massive stat increases, awesome weaponry, spell knowledge, new skills...
The *only* real cost of this is an extremely small chance of getting doomed.

And you guys want to remove the dooming? Really?

I think this is a really clever way of resolving the issue to the satisfaction of both sides of the argument:

www.adom.de/forums/project.php?issueid=4220

It feels very weird that I have to Greater Identity a statue next to me rather than just "look" at it to see what it looks like. It may or may not be a good RFE for helping you learn statues in general, but it doesn't to me seem to solve the problem of step-on statues.

I had originally been thinking of supporting the pro side of this, but this made me realize I had been overly affected by the 17 corruptions example. There are other negative (instant) effects besides just the dooming, but I agree that few/none of them are truly that bad, not even early dooming. I've spent long amounts of time doomed before I could gather the piety to remove it before, and I recall seeing others intentionally play doomed.

I think the dooming statue would be much better if it had karmic effect instead, though I already ran into a different statue with that effect. Another step-on statue people haven't talked about is there's one that dropped my alignment significantly - several thousand stones IIRC. I'm not sure if it counts as against paragon of order, but that would be an annoying way to lose it if it does. It could definitely cause you to become a fallen champion, though.

I would have assumed the 17 corruptions to be another bug.

Yes, I want the dooming to be removed... from step-on effects. Make it kick/pray/cast spell-based but not on step. Hell make more statues with that, I don't care, make their descriptions so vague and convoluted that players might actually thinks it's something good.
I'm all for getting rid of wish statues or the other major boosters if that's what it takes, at least that way I *might* consider checking statues out at all.
Dooming is not the only bad effect. There is one that drains strength and/or toughness by several points (whoever authored that one... burn in hell) - quite a major drawback for some chars without access to morgia or with To elevated above 25 or St above 18.
There are effects that halve PC's hp and other massively detrimental ones.
Not a single positive effect of the same caliber as the negative one of doom is obtained upon step-on, that's my problem.
The wish one is kick based as far as I know (the lamp) and is not guaranteed.
Apparently there is another one that is guaranteed when the corresponding statue has been generated but it's also activated upon deliberate action, not step-on.

Finally, you dismiss the impact of dooming on a char in the early game - altars are frequently unavailable or far away, there are monsters left behind that make backtracking virtually impossible and areas ahead that have not been explored.
Levels generated while the PC is doomed have more traps and higher monster DL plus the unfavorable combat rolls.
So yes, dooming is very removable at a mid+ stage of the game but not always before.
I lost more than one char to the dooming statue, one of them actually had a coaligned altar on the same level but never made it to that room because of dooming and sickness-inducing undead that cannot be sacced.

I have to rephrase something else however - I'm not against the dooming from a statue as an effect, I'm against it as step-on effect.
For all I care, there can be 5 different statues that doom the PC if that's what people like.
When I kick one and get doomed, I have only myself and my own curiosity to blame.
For step-on dooming, that's an arbitrary punishing effect for nothing and I will never agree with that.
It's best to just make *all* statues interaction-based versus step-on based.

I'd be happy with a config variable to remove statues entirely.

[edit]In terms of balance, I think that toning down statues effects in general--including the free wishes and massive stat increases and whatnot, is probably otherwise a good idea. I would assume that TB probably wants to keep them as they are as much as possible to honour crowdfunding pledges, but I think they're honestly rather detrimental to the game experience as a whole at the moment. I include my own statue in this, FWIW, which has a fairly nasty effect on it that was poorly thought out in hindsight.