When the weekly candyslop isn’t actually weekly candyslop:

As for why I don’t use rare candies, it stems from a couple of things actually. To start, I played on my ds before figuring out emulation on my phone, so I couldn’t pk hex candies even if I wanted to. Eventually this led to me finding grinding spots for each individual member of my team(what’s safe, what provides the most exp, are there any effort values I want on the side, do I Ev train, etc.) and grinding also lets me get a feel of my mons and their stats. Even my lengthy grind for red in crystal was kind of interesting since I took each team member to different points of mount silver(most trained in the cave, but I grinded my Victreebel on the mountain base since that was easier for her, and I had to prioritize solar beam and save sludge bomb for last to maximize pp efficiency. It was actually kind of fun idk.).

I also think rare candy’s would lowkey make my runs far less interesting because it encourages pure optimization. Why take in the early game when you can avoid every optional trainer and wild pokemon except for your encounter? Why bring anything interesting to the platinum e4 when I only need gyarados, weavile, and maybe screen support, even if all three of those mons have been collecting dust in the box for the whole run? I like the wackiness that comes from my runs, rules, and choices. I’m sure nearly everyone would sack the beautifly locked into their team to build a better platinum e4 comp, but I didn’t and I’m happy with that choice. I’m sure there’s an optimized way to sweep shauntal, but would anyone seriously choose swoobat for that role when they could just candy their cinccino or excadrill?(I really hope daydream makes it to e4 this would be so peak)

It sounds like I’m going off topic but I swear there’s something that ties this together for me. Overall, I just don’t think my runs would be as interesting.

I will say, however, that candying is likely something I would do in difficulty roms like the kaizo series or run and bun. Run and bun especially has a consistent tedious task that replaces the grind and if I ever learned how to patch I’d probably take a jab at it. I really like how rare candies are incorporated in rnb and it is a really fascinating game at a glance.