By default if you walk over a stair, you automatically go up. This can be seriously troublesome if you're running around fighting NPCs and when you're not I can't think of any real benefits outside of fights even. Often you really don't want to go up (surely at least 50% of the time on average?) but the character just goes up and then you have to manually drop down (which you have to do carefully due to the way dropping down works -- I still can't decide if that's better or worse, lol.) This is kind of annoying when not in battles and downright deadly when in battles (I've died all too many times during a heated battle by going up stairs in a dungeon/village when I didn't want to and getting stuck in a corner when I was trying to back out instead.) My first thought was that you should be able to hold the down button to avoid going up, but after thinking it over some more I think it's overall better if you don't go up stairs by default. What I'm imagining is a system like the later Castlevania (2D variants that is) games -- you'd walk past a stair by default, but if you hold up when you get to it you start up the stairway. From there you can hold up and down to go up and down as expected, but also left and right will go up or down depending on whether that is left or right (eg you don't just drop off or something annoying like that.) This always seemed to work very well for them and I can see it suiting this game well too. This also means that if this method were used, you could go down a stairway without dropping onto it by holding down.
Agreed, this is very annoying. Should have to hold up. It makes more sense that way at least in my opinion.
Well to be fair stairs are basicallly just platforms in this game so changing it would likely result in having to hold up to not fall through non-stair platforms to your death.
That's not true at all man. He stated an example of how it would work. Only when walking past the stairs, you hold up for the brief moment you are faced with a "choice" to go up or walk past. Once you're on it, it works like a normal platform.
Problem is the stairs and platform are the same item. I'm not saying it can't be done just that it wouldn't be easy and the attempt could very well break things worse. Changing even the smallest thing when coding can cause great wonky-ness.
Based on how the game is already handling them separately (eg you actually go up or down when they are angled and it even shows them differently on the screen) I really doubt that this is the extreme change you think it is. The fact that it uses the same placed materials alone doesn't mean that to the engine they are literally the same thing... That said, it's still something that should be at least considered later if not sooner as it is something that can cause real problems at times.
We're talking about what would be better as a complete feature, not what would be best for the time being because if not executed properly in code would break things.
