Stairs are awful

Ok, well the stairs themselves are pretty darn nice. But what I hate is the way you default to walking up stairs.
If you actually want to go the horizontal route, then you have to do the very-awkward jump-down thing. Which also sucks really bad.
Stairs are kinda a background element, they should act accordingly. It makes more sense to me to have to hold the up key as you approach stairs, like other some platform games with stairs do.

Anyone else have issues with this, and would like Chucklefish to fix it? Please make some noise!

 

Yeah, this should be the new way stairs work

 

I totally agree on this. I further suggest that double-tapping s should drop you through the platform you are standing on-- none of this jump+down combo nonsense.

 

Yes, I agree! Make us press up to use stairs, that would be better. And I HATE the drop-down issue, it should be just down, not down and jump. If the devs were trying to make it so that we can duck on a platform without dropping, then they can make it so that we don't drop if we hold shift or something...but I insist that jump pressing down should make us drop through a platform. Just like in Terraria and Smash Bros. and other games.

 

It even messes up NPCs. You ever been to a prison and watched enemies try to chase you past stairs? It's like they don't know how their own legs work.

 

Up + Horizontal Direction is the only logical method for stairs that doesn't feel horribly obtuse.

 

I expected this to be a really shitty thread.

But I agree.

 

I wholeheartedly agree, especially since UP is not used for anything (at least for walking characters), so why not use it here.

Dropping down platforms (plus the behavior of stopping or not stopping on stairs/ platforms) is another question I find harder to answer. Current way to do it doesn't seem very simple, though.

 

The up key for stairs is a great idea, since it's not used for anything as far as I can tell.

Another solution might be to make stairs settable as a background item, which would require players to press up to get onto them. Putting them in the foreground would mean they are in use automatically.

 

I noticed this problem with the stairs as well and I hope they change it.

 

One word.

Castlevania.

 

Trying to go down the stairs or a platform is absolutely annoying. With a little bit of lag I have fallen down an entire dungeon of platforms and other times I drop gracefully only one platform. Definitely all for a better down/stair control. Press to hold crouch would be fine maybe use a different letter to crouch and use S to go down a platform or stairs.

 

I completely agree with the "press up to go up stairs idea". As for dropping down platforms, there's some topics on that already. For example, "Should Platforms Slow Falls?", which ends up addressing the annoyance of current platform drops.

I myself find that down+jump would be good enough if they switched the function of the down and jump keys in the process. As in, press both to descend, keep JUMP pressed to fall like a rock (if you want to - maybe there's water at the bottom you want to quickly dive into through all the platforms). This switch would in my opinion make the controls feel better because it's much more natural to tap jump and not mind the down key, than to tap down and jump at the same time, then remember to let go of the down key. Letting go of the jump key when you no longer want to move comes automatically to more people I'd say.
This way you could hold down pressed as much as you want (crouching on platforms etc) and then tap jump once to go down a single level or hold it to fall. You could even fall onto a platform straight into crouch state (if you keep down pressed and release jump).

 

The foreground/background Idea is good. Not sure visually, how it would be implemented, but it's a wonderful idea!

 

Yeah,

Yeah I agree. Foreground/background stairs would be a really cool solution.