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.

I'm not so sure.

If you stick your hand in a fire and get burnt, write an RFE to 'god' and complain?

Don't step on statues, or assess the risks and make a calculated decision to do so. I don't think there is any intended statue effect that is so calamitous that you couldn't make backup preparations to cover for it.

The only ones I want gone are the ones that bug.

The problem is that you can't assess the risks based on the information you get.
"There is a statue here" is not enough info to make a good decision.
Each statue should have at least partially meaningful description when 'l'ooked at with the appropriate command, so the player can actually make an educated choice.
Another solution is to completely remove step-on effects and make them all action-dependent, like praying/kicking/casting a spell etc.
Then it will truly be a player's choice and player's fault when the consequences are dire.

If we follow your line of reasoning, you shouldn't step on items because there could be a trap beneath and you could die.
Don't talk to npc's because they could go hostile, attack and kill you, etc. But then what's the point of playing?

The only mode of operation in Adom is interaction and with insta-dooming statues, this interaction is taken away from the player in favor of some arbitrary punishment for being curious.
That is wrong.

Correct. You make it based on either a mental inventory of all the possible statue efffects, or a guess, drawn from knowledge of the game's mechanics and an understanding that statues won't (or aren't supposed to) outright kill you, what are all the awful things that could happen.

It's like your first time eating a certain corpse, only the positives and negatives are more extreme. There's nothing stopping you from treating the game like it used to be before statues existed.

If the strong negative effects are removed, the strong positive ones (eg. The free wish statue) ought to be toned down as well.

It's not about removal of the strong negative effects - I have nothing against them, let them stay.
I'd just expect this to happen upon interaction with a statue.

You get a wish by kicking the lamp statue for example, so why not also require some form of deliberate interaction to get doomed?
A new player won't know what effects to expect from either statue description but at least there will be a choice whether or not to find out.
No statue gives a wish just by stepping on it and so no statue should doom in the same situation.

It is not memmory problem, but of effects range. Some point onward character is likely best just to ignbore statues unless he wants risk getting Hp halfed and alike. And avoiding statues is not cool, IMHO.

Sad thing statues were supposed to give description on "l"ook, but that function apparently crashed game. In my opinion if "l"ook optioon is removed, step on should be moved to "h"andle of whatever (personally I do not think step on effects was great idea to start with - maybe give description on stepping with prompt for action would have been better).

I can get behind that idea.

I thought the deal with statues was that if you were a big enough donor, you could get any effect you wanted put in. If so, it's no surprise that the effects are unbalanced. I mean, maybe tb never thought 'hey, it would be a good idea to have a statue that dooms you when you step on it'. Maybe that's just what the donor submitted an he had no choice.

Another problem is that, iirc, 'w', direction commands don't stop the pc before they step on the statue, even though the stop at other dungeon features. This needs to be corrected.

Biskup explicitly stated that statues that didn't fit Ancardia would be negotiated or modified, so it's not like this is something that can't change. I'm personally fine with imbalanced effects, but the effects the trigger on touch definitely need to go. Being cautious shouldn't necessitate avoiding what would otherwise be a nice bit of flavor.

'You stumble upon a statue. It bears a striking resemblance to Richard, the warp duck of lore.'

Totally fits.

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.

A statue that dooms your PC just from stepping onto its location does seem quite unfair (ie: more unfair than is even expected of the great RNG) .. I think that one needs to be toned down.
(17 corruptions also seems a bit excessive .. is there ever a time when that would not kill a player?)

I ran into a statue recently that drained 5 St and To each, just by stepping on it. That seems pretty excessive as well.

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.

Yeah statue should be triggered by something else than stepping on it (i dont know kicking it or handle ?). But I've only encountered positive statues so far :)

With no cost but with a very low probability of appearing, as there are plenty of statues and the vast majority of them don't grant a wish.

You can already get free wishes with no cost, e.g. RoDS just lying on the ground. Such strokes of luck are typical of roguelikes, and in fact, of ADOM itself. So I don't see the problem.

Personally I'm fine with the player risking dooming or other bad outcomes in order to have the chance of getting something good (this already happens in pools, a well-loved mechanic). However, I agree with previous posters that having such radical effects (both good and bad) kicking in on entering the statue square doesn't feel right. Typically, radical effects require deliberate action from the player.

I think at the very least, a Y/N prompt would be in order, something like "There is a statue here. Would you like to investigate the statue?". If you say Y, then you get the description, you trigger the effects that currently activate on entering the square, and you can also kick/pray to the statue if you like. If you say N, then you ignore the statue, you won't know what it represents and you won't be able to activate any effect except if you come back to the square and say Y later.

On the other hand, dooming is fine but the statue giving 17 corruptions definitely should go, instadeath of powerful characters that made no specific mistake is not OK.

i would like to remind statues were supposed to be identified while "l"ooking at them. Apparently lookint at staue crashed the game, so the current state is a result of hotfix and not an intended feature.

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.

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.

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?"

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.

No disagreement from me here.

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.