Statues with absurd effects on gameplay
issueid=3734 06-22-2015 05:58 AM
Ancient Member
Number of reported issues by Carter: 20
Statues with absurd effects on gameplay
Some Statues have too much impact on the game

some of the statue effects need to be toned down or modified.

recently playing a game when i stepped upon a statue which dooms your PC. Just for stepping on it.

This is adding WAY too much RNG luck to the game. This PC is basically screwed as he is only level 10.

i'm for negative effects when you take a risk. just stepping on a statue shouldn't doom a player.
Issue Details
Issue Number 3734
Issue Type Feature
Project ADOM (Ancient Domains Of Mystery)
Category Windows 7
Status Implemented
Priority 1 - Highest
Suggested Version ADOM r57
Implemented Version ADOM 2.3.5
Milestone "Resurrect ADOM" Indiegogo Fulfillment
Votes for this feature 23
Votes against this feature 11
Assigned Users (none)
Tags (none)




01-08-2016 08:47 PM
Senior Member
I know what the corruption statue looks like now and I will never kick it again. Honestly I'd be fine with just fine tuning on the current statues, I feel like something should be done even if it isn't big. It's just weird that that one statue is so much more dangerous than the others. I think one of my favorite statues is the one that spawns greater chaos servants all around you and drops a potion of cure corruption at your feet, it's like a little challenge for a reward. 17 corruptions for 5 charisma and 2 willpower is never ever worth it.

01-08-2016 09:31 PM
Senior Member
Quote Originally Posted by hapro
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 believe I ran into this one on my recent successful paragon (the "I want to hear your screams!" one?) and it did not apply the alignment change (I was L+). The wiki suggests it drops align straight to CN so it would be a problem for neutral champions (but lawfuls may be protected?).

01-09-2016 05:30 AM
Junior Member
Statues should be compared to pools, which they closely resemble: once they activate, you'll get a boon or bane. Work out if it's worth the risk and deal with the consequenses. It ruins the gamble if you'll know the result beforehand. Someone said that statues are dead feature as is, because they never dare to step on any of them. Aren't pools the same? With the same logic you'd never drink from any of them and they'd be just gaping O's not any different from the usual floor? If step-on activation is removed and one always knows what is to happen, I'll make an RFE to get pool sips tell you the effect beforehand too.

Seriously though, I think the statues are fine as they are now, just fix the instakilling corruption statue (or tone down if it's working as intended). Stepping on a statue is as conscious choice to activate it as is drinking from a pool (at least after the first time), as long as statues do not appear in corridors.

01-09-2016 07:56 AM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Moonlooper
Statues should be compared to pools, which they closely resemble: once they activate, you'll get a boon or bane. Work out if it's worth the risk and deal with the consequenses. It ruins the gamble if you'll know the result beforehand. Someone said that statues are dead feature as is, because they never dare to step on any of them. Aren't pools the same? With the same logic you'd never drink from any of them and they'd be just gaping O's not any different from the usual floor? If step-on activation is removed and one always knows what is to happen, I'll make an RFE to get pool sips tell you the effect beforehand too.
That would be true if pools were designed by players. Now why some statues should never entertain people just cause someone thought 17 corruptions is fun... well, I just fail to understand that.

I guess compromise, would be to give step on statues different color [preferably red] and allow donators to reassign their statue triggers.

01-09-2016 10:36 AM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Moonlooper
Statues should be compared to pools, which they closely resemble: once they activate, you'll get a boon or bane. Work out if it's worth the risk and deal with the consequenses. It ruins the gamble if you'll know the result beforehand. Someone said that statues are dead feature as is, because they never dare to step on any of them. Aren't pools the same? With the same logic you'd never drink from any of them and they'd be just gaping O's not any different from the usual floor? If step-on activation is removed and one always knows what is to happen, I'll make an RFE to get pool sips tell you the effect beforehand too.

Seriously though, I think the statues are fine as they are now, just fix the instakilling corruption statue (or tone down if it's working as intended). Stepping on a statue is as conscious choice to activate it as is drinking from a pool (at least after the first time), as long as statues do not appear in corridors.
You can step on a pool and decide to drink from it or not. Once you decide, of course the effect is applied and is unpredictable, that's perfectly fine.
When you step on a statue and its effect is applied immediately, that's not fine.
I expect statues to behave like pools - deliberate action from the PC triggers an effect. Stepping on should not be the triggering action.
For pools, it's drinking, for statues it should be either kicking, praying or casting some magic bolt.
Step-on effects are a big no-no and comparing them to pools which only bestow effects after deliberate activating action is a very poor logic.

01-09-2016 02:33 PM
Senior Member
Blasphemous - the point which you seem to be (perhaps willingly) missing is the fact that after you step on a statue, you have identified it.
After you step on a pool, you don't get to know what the sip is going to do.

Items in ADOM get around this by having a kind of 'half identify' effect. You pick up a ring, it doesn't tell you what it does. It tells you it's an 'agate ring', but that still doesn't tell you what it does, it gives an experienced player a rough idea, but tou either have to risk trying it on, or expend resources to identify it exactly.
That is, for items, you get half your identify on free examination, and have to pay for the other half (through risk or identify).
Pools have no form of identification at all, and can only be drank with risk.

Statues have a new, clever method of 'half identify'. You get an exact, researchable identification at the cost of a risk of dooming (and some other trivial effects).



You mention that stepping on pools triggers nothing whereas stepping on statues runs a risk of negative effects. This is true.

However, stepping on a statue IDENTIFIES that statue. That's what the risk of dooming is needed for. Without that 'on-step' risk you get to identify the statue for free, and that in turn means every single 'no effect' or negative effect statue may as well not exist, while every single positive effect statue is going to be scooped up by every knowledgeable player with neither risk nor consumption of resouces.
Removing punishing 'on-step' effects from statues effectively makes statues decisionless, they're just beneficial loot for experienced adom players, and game-breaking punishments for new players.

Having on-stop punishments, however, brings decision making into the equation - can I remove dooming? Do I have enough corruption removal from potential negatives? Yes? Then maybe I'll sip from this pool (sorry, I mean step on this statue).


Soirana: players don't have to risk 17 corruptions from statues. At all. Ever. You never have to risk it while still enjoying all the benefits of statues - After you step on a statue that reads:
"You stumble upon a statue. It is made of some unnatural watery substance which streams without losing its form. The statue seems to be vaguely familiar to you. ... An inscription at the bottom reads: "Who are you?"
Don't kick that statue.

Congratulations, you no longer have to ignore statues for fear of being turned to jelly.
You can thank me later. ;) :D

01-09-2016 02:49 PM
Senior Member
I'd propose the following to satisfy people about statues - have a generic, non-punishing identification of a statue ('you walk past an old statue' or something) on step.

Have 'on step' effects of statues instead triggered by the 'look' command, which will also identify the statue for the ensuing kick or pray effect. Players not wanting to risk dooming could just go ahead and kick or pray, rolling the dice of the kick or prey effect that they're after, but with a strong chance of 'does nothing'. :D

01-09-2016 03:22 PM
Ancient Member
Some people (who like big letters) are willingly ignoring the fact that most donators designed their statues for fun (and I would bet most players play the game for the exactly same reason).
If some ****ers want to design death traps and other ***ies want to gamble with them, that's fine, but no reason to get all normal and reasonable people and their statues involved. Hence I think coloring step on statues is best compromising solution.

01-09-2016 03:57 PM
Ancient Member
Coloring step-on statues sound nice, I can agree to that. Positive step-on effects would of course be included to balance pros and cons but at least I could completely ignore all statues from that particular group.
On the other hand I have to reject all of sylph's arguments - too much weight is given to statue identification as an important and game altering feature.
It really is not such a big issue. So what if you can identify every statue without risk? It's an added game element which players can easily do without.
At this point I'm completely avoiding *all* statues because I don't want to have any unwanted step-on effects applied. I can easily work without this feature.
Also, when I still stepped on statues, I often kicked/prayed etc without consulting the wiki just to see if my suspicions about the effects, gathered from the description, were indeed correct. If all statues' effects were only interaction based, I'd continue doing that, learning the bad stuff the hard way.

New players will probably step on to check it out and won't even realize when they get an effect applied, might not even know of a list of all statues and their effects on the wiki or may choose to remain in the dark for the sake of exploration and experiencing a new game.
So what result is there? A lot of players that would otherwise appreciate statues and their descriptions but they won't step on them because of the possible dooming effect.
Then we have the new players which will check the feature out regardless of there being a step-on effect or not.
I think you assume that every pro player is sitting with the relevant wiki page opened and ctrl-fing every statue they encounter.
That's not the case, there are many statues that I have seen several times and I still only get a vague idea of what they do.
If each statue had an effect description similar to those with pool effects then what is wrong about that?
You still can't be sure what really is the effect so either you ignore it or you risk it. You can always look it up in the wiki but that's not really an argument since a ton of other game features can be similarly checked and warded against.

What then is the value of having extremely negative step-on effects on statues?
What does it achieve? Balance as you say? I disagree, the statues offer arbitrary effects which have little to do with balance.
Their functions are brainchildren of donators and thus in many cases not even lore friendly.
How do you address the fact they were originally *all* meant to be identifiable upon 'l'ooking?
FWIW, I heard it crashed the game in several instances and so the temporary step-on identification method was implemented instead. Temporary.

For me, that dooming effect is a single thing that keeps me away from all statues at this point, even though I'd gladly explore them and gauge their effects.
At least with pools, they are rare and you can set up a comfortable system where each negative effect obtained by sipping is countered - spare blink dog corpse, nearby altar or lots of piety etc.
For statues which are clearly a more common feature with overall less meaningful effects (if any at all for some) the same is not true since you might very well get doomed on the first level of DD and die soon after.
Instead of working as nice little diversification, which very rarely gives you something really nice/powerful or something the PCs might want to check out just to satisfy their curiosity, they turn into potentially deadly traps.
That is a poor implementation of the feature that is discouraging rather than enhancing.

01-10-2016 10:56 AM
Ancient Member
If nothing else, the statue with 17 corruptions really needs to be nerfed. Itīs absurd and doesnīt fit the world of ADOM. Even deliberately consuming the corpse of an Orb Guardian doesnīt have nearly this strong an effect.

01-10-2016 11:01 AM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by Soirana
Some people (who like big letters) are willingly ignoring the fact that most donators designed their statues for fun (and I would bet most players play the game for the exactly same reason).
If some ****ers want to design death traps and other ***ies want to gamble with them, that's fine, but no reason to get all normal and reasonable people and their statues involved. Hence I think coloring step on statues is best compromising solution.
Yep, that's an excellent point.

When I designed my statue, I could have asked for an exaggerated effect, but I deliberately chose a mild effect that isn't unbalancing, and most of the time it's not especially useful but it could give a very interesting utility that may save lives of players who realize how to use it in the early game (it makes a fireball on the spot if you pray to the statue, so if a weak player finds it in a dungeon they can retreat to it and pray to defeat some monsters).

Of course, the statue becomes totally useless if the majority of players (including myself) are not even daring to step on statues at all because some of them have turned into a death gamble.

The thing is, I (and I suppose many other players) designed the statue under the assumption that the player would be able to look at it without risk. Now that isn't true, just the mere act of seeing which statue it is carries a huge risk, it could doom the player or have even worse effects. So now my statue gives a pitiful reward (a fireball) for a huge risk.

Honestly there's no rational way to defend the current way statues work (which, let's remind again, it's probably not intended but the provisional result of a hotfix). It's what Soirana says, it may be OK for the few extreme statues but ruins the other ones.

Possible compromise solutions to keep the gamble of the step-on statues (if people want to keep that) without affecting the others are:

(1) make statues lookable again but give step-on statues a description that says "you can't tell the details of the statue from here, you would need to get closer",

(2) prompt before looking at step-on statues ("you feel a wave of power when getting close to the statue, do you really want to approach it? y/n"),

(3) color the step-on statues as Soirana says.

But I'm definitely not going to support any solution that turns the mere fact of stepping into any statue into a deadly gamble because this means that the few extreme statues totally dominate the mechanic, and statues by those of us who wanted to create more subtle effects on kicking/praying won't even get used except once in a blue moon. And that's wasting the potential of an interesting game mechanic.

01-10-2016 08:00 PM
Ancient Member
Quote Originally Posted by pjsb1
Just recently I ran into a statue right after the air temple with a character that had absolutely no business losing. He had 2 corruptions at the time and was barely corrupted. I decided I might as well kick this statue because why not? Nothing really bad can happen right? And then it gave me 17 corruptions. And i died. Literally anything else wouldn't have killed me besides just taking away all my hp. There are definitely some statues that need tweaking.
17 corruptions sounds like a bug, straight out. Giving two corruptions by walking would be quite harsh by any measure - but within the spirit of the RNG.

01-11-2016 10:34 PM
Ancient Member
I really like the compromise of having "step-on" statues be visually distinct from other statues, but not from each other. I can certainly buy a statue that damages me when I look at it too closely (medusa from mythology, for instance), but I don't want to have to ignore all statues for that.

This would make "step-on" statues work like pools, but all the other statues would work as features that players could figure out/learn about.

Whether it's coloring them red or having a "look at it more closely?" prompt, I think that might be one of the best ideas to satisfy everyone.

01-15-2016 06:55 AM
Junior Member
It's a difficult issue because people paid for the privilege of designing their statues in the Kickstarter, but they shouldn't damage the game's actual playability in return. IMO Thomas Biskup has final right of implementation and should be able to slightly modify elements such as the strength of the effect, the text (some of the statue dialogues have typos), and maybe adjusting step-on statues to 'l'ook different from examination just so people don't get terrified of touching them at all thereby ruining their existence and interest. Something as simple as "you spot a concealed pressure plate at the statue's base" would work. Hey, it could even be linked to Search and Detect Traps..

10-10-2017 07:53 PM
The Creator
Quote Originally Posted by Blasphemous
I lost a promising priest to that dooming statue and that was a char with access to coaligned altar.
I just could not handle corpse fiends giving me sickness with every hit and stone statues burning all the equipment I had.
I agree that statues which doom the PC on stepping are just too harsh.
First change: Statues no longer invoke effects upon entering their position. You have to actively wait for at least turn. This gives you a chance to understand the statue and react appropriately. Seems much better.

10-10-2017 07:55 PM
The Creator
Quote Originally Posted by zliplus
I believe I ran into this one on my recent successful paragon (the "I want to hear your screams!" one?) and it did not apply the alignment change (I was L+). The wiki suggests it drops align straight to CN so it would be a problem for neutral champions (but lawfuls may be protected?).
Same here - it only will be activated when actively waiting. So you have the chance to make a conscious decision.

10-10-2017 08:02 PM
The Creator
Quote Originally Posted by sylph
I voted yes by mistake. I wanted to vote no. I think strong punishments for identifying a statue are necessary when that identification can potentially lead to a wish. If you remove the bad 'on step' effects, the lamp statue is just a free wish with no cost.
The free wish has a 50% chance for a hostile djinn. Just saying...

10-10-2017 08:08 PM
The Creator
Quote Originally Posted by auricbond
I would have assumed the 17 corruptions to be another bug.
This doesn't exist in any current version. Maybe it once existed... but it's far from anything that can happen today.

10-10-2017 08:11 PM
The Creator
Quote Originally Posted by JellySlayer
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.
Just to state this: Each and every statue and effect can be discussed. The crowdfunding campaign stated that effects will be altered if they don't work for the game or the game background. So please submit RFEs for individual statues and we will review, discuss and address them.

10-10-2017 08:14 PM
The Creator
Having read all the comments I think that changing the trigger from "activated upon entering" to "activated upon waiting" IMHO is a good solution.

I'll now review all statues once more and then be done with this topic unless I receive RFEs / bug reports for _individual_ statues :-)

Thanks everyone!

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