The Most Harmful Character Trait

[OakTable]

Greed. Never be greedy ever. Too many villains and neutral people have died due to wanting some random shiny thing and instead getting crushed, backstabbed, or left for dead by someone else who wanted the treasure.

This includes you, the player.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

Gonna also jump on the "What the hell do you mean by calling Wakka a bad character?" bandwagon. Wakka was about 100x better than Tidus or Yuna. Wakka is an idiot. That doesn't make him a bad character; if anything, it adds to his charm. Tidus and Yuna, on the other hand, are whiny little pieces of crap. Seriously, a whiny character is NEVER good, unless he/she grows out of it by the end of the first act.

 

[Zantos]

The thing that really bugs me is having a character based on a single ideal that they keep going on about. It's the main reason I didn't like Tali, all I ever remembering from her is about the geth being evil for making her people suffer. I know it's a big thing but still, she could have taken a day off now and then. One of the reasons I didn't want to romance her was because I was afraid she'd mood ruin by talking about the geth and the migrant fleet half way through.

I liked Wakka. I mean he never made my squad, or my blitzball team, but he was a nice guy.

 

[CrashBang]

Naivety sucks. The character which fucks things up through misunderstanding or making stupid mistakes

 

[FalloutJack]

Come to think of it, I hate whiny behavior too.

 

[Solo-Wing]

*Points to Final Fantasy 12*
Outside of Balthier, Ashe, and sometimes Basch every character pissed me off. So pretty much don't do what any of those characters were like.

Oh and forgot Reddas. He was awesome.

 

[darth.pixie]

Character whininess. Especially since almost all PCs have much bigger problems now instead of dealing something that happened in the tragic past. You essentially turn into a psychiatrist. An unpaid one...

Granted, most of it is probably due to bad writing or too few dialogues. The PC is supposed to spend a lot of time with certain characters, talking about a lot of things and getting friendly. But we only see three or four dialogues with them in which they only talk about what the developers thought would be their main character background/personality trait. So, can bad writing be a character flaw?

 

[greenitedaze]

The worst trait for me is the hate factor. Sometimes you get characters/followers that seem to have
been designed just for you to get annoyed at, leading to dark thoughts of harm.

There's been a few, but my stand out one, was in Afro Samurai, where a spirit floats around you
constantly teling you how shit you are. Thanks for the pep talk.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

Lack of forethought... it seriously pisses me off when a character lets a bad guy go or doesnt finish them off, and then 10 minutes later they end up being killed by the person they let go.

Also, something like greed, or selfishness... because when it comes down to it, that person can never be trusted.

 

[Chrono180]

Repetition. Such as :

"Hey, Listen!"

"Hey, Listen!"

"Hey, Listen!"

"Hey, Listen!"

And so forth. I mean, if you make me listen to the same phrase every ten minutes throughout a game, its a pretty good bet I will stop playing it.

 

[Cheesus333]

Stubbornness. You can never change if you refuse to see there's a problem.

 

[Inkidu]

The worst character trait. One-dimensionality. Stock characters, character who are this one characteristic of a normally multifaceted character.

Anyone of the characters from Final Fantasy 13. Serously, it's like they said, "Let's make one really good fleshed-out character and divide its personality up perfectly along the lines to get a whole party."

Look at it no growth, no development. Even Marcus Fenix grows a smidge. You really, really have to look for it. So the only bad trait is one-sidedness.

 

[Katana314]

Assholes. In my favorite games, even when the villains are slaughtering kittens, they are "likable" and well-written to an extent. We all liked Heath Ledger's Joker even knowing how evil he is.

I just played through The Ballad of Gay Tony (GTA4) and actually skipped some of Mori's cutscenes because he was such a dick to everyone for no reason. I can't believe I was even roped into killing some of the people he ripped off.

 

[Meggiepants]

I can't stand characters who don't stick to their personalities. I understand growth in a character, but when you have a character suddenly make a decision that is contrary to the core of who they are simply for the plot to move forward, I hate it.

Also,

In the world of video games there have been more than a few bad characters (Wakka, Samus from M etc.). What do you believe is the most harmful trait for any character to have in his/her development?

I would have to say overconfidence. Sam from Vanquish is a prime example, his overconfidence is just annoying, and it never goes away.

I have to ask, what was wrong with Wakka?

I was going to say, Wakka was a bad character?? Sure, he's a *flawed* character, but he's also twelve kinds of awesome. And he's voiced by Joe DiMaggio, aka Bender. That's awesome.


Just for clarification - do you mean character traits that you don't like, or actual bad character traits. Because sometimes, a character's flaws and bad traits are what gives them...well, character. >_>

Thirded. I found myself wishing Wakka was the main character instead of Tidus many times. Plus, I think Wakka would have been more interesting to explore than an egotistical Blitzball star with daddy issues.

Based on what everyone else is using as a basis of the question, I would say whiny too. Unless it is executed in a comedic sense, whiny is annoying and will make me hate you being in the game.

Fourthed. I love Wakka. He was my favorite character behind Auron in FFX.

 

[DonSolo]

I think having Aids would be a pretty harmful character trait, it's only a matter of time... Aids does count as a character trait, right?

 

[Lerasai]

Well, if we're just talking about in general traits then an annoying voice or just plain awful voice acting can make me dislike a character either immediately or over time as the voice grates on my nerves to the point that their other traits are no longer endearing.
In terms of personality traits, I really dislike the chronic "foot-in-mouth" disease that many main characters have(jrpgs are especially guilty of this since it is also a common trend in anime). It's like the developers think we're all idiots who would just out and say the first thing that comes to mind no matter how rude or stupid or whiny. This doesn't make me like or relate to the character more it just makes me embarrassed for them.
I get that it makes exposition easier when the character standing in for the player is a complete moron, but there just has to be a better way. Or at least a less lazy one.

 

[Terminate421]

Unfortunatly its being Female (And no, I am not being sexist)

If someone is female they are either:

A. TOO Characterized (They shove it in our faces)
B. Stereotyped (They have breasts, nag alot, and tend to get sexually attracted to the main character)

The only examples I can think of when it comes to exceptions is Samus (NOT from Other M) and Tali Zorah.

My most hated character trait however is anything that has to do with this: