Things you spent too much time on

[Foxxeyy]

Personally, in USUM at least, I always spun my character around really really fast and eventually the game makes you do a twirl which continues until you ever so slightly slip up or stop. I used to time myself to try and set new records, eventually I managed a straight 56 seconds of spinning, I challenge you to beat that.

In Alpha Sapphire, the cycling road was the bane of my existence. To this day, I still don't know if it's possible to get under 10 seconds, but I came damn close nearly every time and spent hours a day just trying to beat it, screw the electric gym.

Of course, in DPP we all used to get a friend (in my case, a brother) to play capture the flag in the underground, agree truces then immediately break them, creates farms of our things to trade for decorations, grind out shards and fossils in the digging activity, and generally make our base as amazing as possible. I missed a great opportunity to do this in ORAS, but honestly it didn't feel as good.

Joint avenue.

Another thing I had a lot of fun doing, back when I didn't explore anything ever, was get a sibling to get a random game, find the largest cave possible, then try to get as lost as possible in them, and I had to make it back. The best caves to do this in, imo, is the Zygarde cave in XY, the lower levels of the cave between Jubilife and Orberough (honestly, NOBODY goes there), and the heatran cave in ORAS. I would put Mt Coronet in there, but everyone has to get through it, so would only work on someone who hasn't played the game.

 

[The Mind Electric]

I think I've already talked about this in another thread, but when I was a gullible kid I spent a lot of time in the Unova games just wandering around looking for Legendary Pokémon in random places because I saw some (in retrospect, obviously hacked) videos of some dude finding a wild Mewtwo in the dark grass on some island somewhere. It was pretty fun.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

There was a time where I just decided I would be a Swablu breeder, and I spent a while almost completely filling a box with baby Swablu. The two parent Swablu were both named Cloudy, and every single baby was named Cloudy Jr.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Writing long, in-depth posts on Smogon that likely aren't read or just skimmed through...

 

[mertyville]

breeding, EV training and replaying Pokemon Diamond to get the TM for Stealth Rock

 

[Codraroll]

I remember when I first got Emerald, I leveled the six Pokémon in my team to the maximum obedience level for each badge, before progressing to the next Gym. After getting the eighth badge, I trained them to level 75 before taking on the Elite Four.

Looking back at it, I really can't fathom why I bothered with that. None of the Pokémon were traded, so it's not even like there actually was a limit to work my way towards. All that grinding must have made the game spectacularly un-fun too. It's not like Gen III Hoenn has any good training spots.

 

[ScraftyIsTheBest]

I spent tons of time in the Unova and Kalos games training up and EV training Pokemon for the Subway/Maison and using competitive sets on them. I never bothered with IVs, funnily enough, but I always focused on EV training many Pokemon that I like/are good in Smogon competitive to use them in the Subway or Maison and try to get as much a winning streak as possible. In many cases I often used Sand builds with Tyranitar/Hippowdon in tandem with Excadrill or Stoutland to attempt to pull off a fast sweep.

But I would often spend hours on end grinding and training mons before I did.

 

[bdt2002]

Writing long, in-depth posts on Smogon that likely aren't read or just skimmed through...

I don’t know if this helps anything, but I like to think I go out of my way to read people’s intricate posts.

Now then, as for the thing that I myself spend too much time on...

-Secret Bases (typically in ORAS)
-PokéStar Studios (B2W2)
-Ultra Warp Ride (USUM)
-Listening to the background music (any game)
-Turning the game off (SS)

 

[Sirya]

Imagine that I grew in a non-Internet era (not that Internet didn't exist, but that it wasn't common at all for kids to have a PC with Internet as we know today 30 years in the past), where your only resource of information as a kid was the Nintendo Acción, the raw amount of lies I (and my entire generation) have been a victim of, and there were no forums, no messenger, no google search, in definitive, not an instantaneous source of information you could use; you had only 2 options: either try it for yourself, investing obscene amounts of time in doing things like winning the Pokémon League 50 consecutive times with no faints in your team, for the ground to break below your feet at the hall of fame and enter a secret room where you can fight and capture Mew (in RB), or leveling a Glalie to level 100 and then follow a very specific set of steps in Granite Cave to get Jirachi... or you ask your friends, so your knowledge about what is and what isn't real is limited to your hometown and the people you know that also play Pokémon. The thing is kids are liars and that people will lie to you too, you at the end you had yourself, your console and a lot of free time to test for yourself every hoax.

 

[SpiritGuy]

My last shiny hunt: I wanted a 31/X/31/31/31/31 shiny Elekid on Pokemon Sword and it came up after 8 flawed shinies, +2000 eggs and more than 1 month:

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

Traditional breeding. Despite all the time I have spent doing this and how much it has been improved throughout the generations, I have never really liked it. In fact, I have only done it because I more or less had to. Mostly for getting Pokémon ready for Battle Facility teams, but oftentimes also for regular Pokémon which I have then used on things like mid-game or post-game teams. While those Pokémon might not "need" perfect IVs or correct Natures, it usually felt better if I made them perfect. I have rarely done any tradtional breeding for online teams, the only time that happened was in X/Y.

Training Pokémon. Mostly to level 50, 100 or somewhere in-between. 85 is a common number because that's what I train my post-game teams to, as well as my mid-game teams on US/UM. I rarely train Pokémon to levels lower than 50 outside of when I train them just to add their evolutions to the Pokédex, but it has happened in a few other cases as well. Though, training Pokémon is at least something I like to do, especially in games with good training spots.

RNG abuse. Especially in Gen 5. I got super addicted to it after learning it in B/W and spent a ton of time RNGing a lot of Pokémon which I then sadly never used or trained for anything. Then I have done it quite a lot on Gen 4 as well, never tried it in Gen 3 or 6-8 though. But like with training Pokémon, this is something I really enjoy, and it can be challenging at times too. It is lots of fun, can recommend it to everyone who doesn't know it.

Despite it being one of my favorite things in Pokémon, one thing I feel that I have not spent too much time on is battling in Battle Facilities. If anything, I feel that I have not spent enough time on it. I often just ended up spending a lot of time on other things instead. Thankfully, there's nothing stopping me from going back to doing more battling in Battle Facilities in the future!

And while this is a bit sad to say, I think one big thing I have spent too much time on is just Pokémon in itself. While I like the games and it is my favorite game series, I have many other interests besides Pokémon and I often wish I had spent more time on them instead. Five years ago on Serebiiforums, there was a thread asking how much time you had spent on the games. I posted there and found out that the total time I had spent on my games from Gen 3-6 back then was over 6000 hours. Nowadays, if we include the time I have spent on Gen 1-2 (can't check my exact playtime on those games for various reasons) as well as Gen 7-8 (which didn't exist five years ago), the real number is definitely above 7000 hours nowadays. Maybe even over 8000 (but probably not over 9000 lolololololol). That is a lot of time. Was it worth it? I think yes. Even if all of that time could have been spent on something different, I like Pokémon and had tons of fun with the games for the most part. And having fun is the most important thing with video games (and entertainment in general) for me, so I think it was worth it.

Writing long, in-depth posts on Smogon that likely aren't read or just skimmed through...

This too. I often spend a lot of time writing long forum posts as well as proofreading them just to make sure everything is perfect... and then it sometimes feels like nobody reads my posts. I want to start writing shorter posts, but it seems like it is just not possible. It feels like the more I write, the harder it becomes for me to keep things short and brief. That said, writing posts here on the forums is often a good way to get certain thoughts out of my head, so that's positive.

(on a side note, Pikachu315111 I really like your posts even if I sadly don't always read them because I don't have enough time/interest for it, but I really appreciate all you do to try to create discussion here on the forums and you are one of my favorite members here, maybe I have said some of this before but I wanted to say it again in that case)

Lastly, I guess one other thing I have spent too much time on is just that: Pokémon forums. I left Serebiiforums in mid-2017 after having been a member there on and off for 11 and a half years. One of the reasons I left the forums were because they had become too much of a time stealer. I often found myself spending time on the forums instead of doing other, more enjoyable things. Lately, I have been thinking about leaving the forums here on Smogon as well. Fun as it is, it also takes a lot of time which I could spend on other things. Outside of posting, I often find myself spending time on just browsing the forums and reading posts. Not only here, but for other forums as well, including ones I am not even a member on such as Bulbagarden or PokéCommunity. I don't spend a lot of time on Serebiiforums anymore after leaving, but I occasionally browse them as well if I have better things to do that I am procrastinating on. I haven't made up my mind yet about leaving Smogon (and at the moment, I have some more posts I am planning to make... some might become quite long... so I am planning to at least make them first lol). But I have thought about taking a long break from the forums (one month or more) just to see how it feels.

...

oh hey look this post also got quite long
how ironic

 

[Wukong]

Saving. When I play the games I tend to save the game before even regular trainer fights in case some weird hax happens. As you can imagine this gets to be quite tiring after a while.

Also I have a bit of OCD so I try to collect all the hidden items in every playthrough which can be quite a time sink as well.

 

[Ironmage]

Trying to force my way to a Frontier symbol with a bad team idea and mediocre IVs. But darn it all, I have repressed childhood issues about being penalized in competitions for being too defensive, so I continue trying to make the Arena fear my mud-slap.

 

[StarKirb94]

NICKNAMES. I catch a Pokémon, decide that I want to use it in my party. Just using its default name is boring, so I decide to give it a nice and cute nickname. The next 30 minutes are spent with me staring at the screen, trying to come up with something, and just, not being able to. The next hour is spent with me searching about anything related to the Pokémon to see if I can think of anything.

Then, I do it! I finally think of a cool name for it! I put the name, hit start to confirm it, then continue with the game.

15 seconds later, "wait no this name sucks actually"

 

[DrumstickGaming]

this forum.

edit: darn it Pikachu315111 you sorta beat me to the joke, or rather “stole my thunder”

 

[Coronis]

Saving. When I play the games I tend to save the game before even regular trainer fights in case some weird hax happens. As you can imagine this gets to be quite tiring after a while.

Also I have a bit of OCD so I try to collect all the hidden items in every playthrough which can be quite a time sink as well.

Ah this brings me back to the days of my earliest games (Silver/Crystal). I remember at that point our parents only allowed us half an hour on either the computer or the handhelds at a time (sometimes we could convince them to go to an hour if we’d been especially good) my parents basically drilled into me a mantra of “save after every battle”. Whilst not limiting me much in terms of Pokemon I remember this keeping a bunch of other games fresh as most would require more than half an hour to complete or make significant progress.

 

[King Feraligatr]

For Pokemon? I spend too much time complaining about a series whose glory days are behind and a series that no longer appeals to me with its newest releases. Or when I'm ROM hacking, taking time to do that instead of playing the games (I've been taking a Pokemon hiatus though, only broken currently by replaying PMD: Gates to Infinity.).

 

[Siggu]

Trying to find the way to reach Cinnabar Island in Red/Blue with the least amount of badges to get 8F and Fly as quickly as possible.

I did it twice on Virtual Console. And a mis-press ended up deleting my save. Twice.

 

[craymond727]

ORAS Legendary soft-resets. Still not finished

 

[Turdterra]

Grinding a team up to level 100 in Yellow for R2 in Stadium, only to accidentally jiggle the game cart and lose everything. I have not recovered from the trauma.

Breeding a Skarmory with Drill Peck and Whirlwind for R2 in Stadium 2. Got Whirlwind on it before my Murkrow had "too much energy". Just....use that energy to bone and give me my egg you stupid bird!

 

[Suspicious Derivative]

NICKNAMES. I catch a Pokémon, decide that I want to use it in my party. Just using its default name is boring, so I decide to give it a nice and cute nickname. The next 30 minutes are spent with me staring at the screen, trying to come up with something, and just, not being able to. The next hour is spent with me searching about anything related to the Pokémon to see if I can think of anything.

Then, I do it! I finally think of a cool name for it! I put the name, hit start to confirm it, then continue with the game.

This too. When it comes to Pokémon I use for serious teams, I always try to come up with good/creative/clever/cool nicknames for them, and I think I often end up taking this way too seriously. Sometimes, I end up spending more time on planning the nicknames than any of the other details for my teams. However, it feels very rewarding when I finally manage to come up with a great nickname for a Pokémon. There have been many that I'm happy about throughout the years, some of my top favorites are Snakebowl, Pulsartery, Sky Ocean, Psychomental, Nightflare... and many others. This makes me wish someone could bump the nicknames thread so I could make another post there with more of my favorite nicknames.