Hey all,
Have a play of this quick project I put together.
As you can see, it's just the platform project template (although I adjusted the character's max speed and acceleration) with platforms arranged in 'steps'. Each step is 1 pixel taller than the previous step.
You may notice some peculiar behavior if you try to run up the steps. In my experience, with a running start, the player will always be stopped by the second-to-last step. You'll also notice that running into the staircase without a running start will eventually stop you short. As such, I'm guessing that the player's ability to 'jump steps' is tied to its x velocity.
While this behavior may be useful for most games, I feel that direct control of 'step-hopping' ability could be useful in some instances. For example, A game I'm working on has lots of big, misshapen tiles that have to be lined up manually and as such there will be 'steps' around the perimeter of each tile where the lining-up isn't perfect.
Does anyone agree that direct control of this behavior would be useful? 
Ashley is this really a coded part of the Platformer behavior, or just a weird side effect?