I just played with a new player who reminded me of an annoying issue that we all have had to get used to. Here it is in bug report form, with script to reproduce:

On Climbing Down a Ladder, Direction Auto-reverses and Makes You Climb Up Instead
1) With inexperienced player and gimped first toon, go into "The Low Road
2) Climb to the top of the ladders in the middle part with the switches.
3) Agro the Kobold at the top.
4) Panic and run straight at the ladder, keeping your direction constant so you will go right down the ladder in the direction you are facing.

RESULT: As soon as you step on the ladder, you turn around. The game is not smart enough to distinguish camera angle from character direction. So, you immediately climb back up and get ganked.

EXPECTED: Regardless of what the view does here (I assume as required by the 3d structure), the character's direction of travel should not get modified except as directed by the player. When you reach the bottom, you should automatically be running the way you were facing when you got on, unless you have intentionally changed your direction via mouse-look or left-click-turn.

SUGGESTION: You already have technology worked out to run one direction while looking another... I.e. I think it is the middle mouse button that lets you turn the view around without affecting run direction. Why not activate that if you can't just leave the camera where it was while climbing down?