It might be a little more restrictive, but not significantly. The main issue is that reversing the steps greatly increases the boundary layer, the water closest to the baseplate, and that's bad.
Note: because of the type of turbulence induced, there is an optimal flow rate: too fast and the vortex will negate the next step. too slow and there won't be a vortex. This is where us block makers have to rely on experimentation, because there's no simple calculation or computer modeling that will allow us to calculate any of this easily.
It's all similar to aerodynamics, or plane makers, where they use turbulators to increase the resulting lift of a wing. The major difference is that air is compressible, and a liquid is (mostly) not. Also, plane designers only have to deal with the resulting noise, but otherwise don't care about the effect of the induced turbulence (think about how much more noise a plane makes when the flaps are down). In block design, turbulence is critical to improving cooling, so the geometry of the turbulence is important.
Nicozeg, what's your baseplate thickness? FYI, I may "borrow" some of that turbulence idea to incorporate into my block
Essentially the same design, but with fins.