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A Personal Comprehensive Mass-Clicking Analysis
Plain Jane
post Oct 31 2019, 08:30 AM
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I thought it'd be interesting to make a topic analyzing my own mass-clicking experience.

This morning, I decided to actually measure the amount of time it takes for me to clear a page in the "users who have registered recently" list (which could also more succinctly be called an "all users" list). I had been meaning to do this for a long time so that I could ascribe hard numbers to what I had already intuitively baked into my brain from doing such a consistent and repetitive task for so long.

For reference, the browser I use is Opera. Fittingly enough, the reason I've used this browser as much as I have over the years, and why I know it exists to begin with, is because it was suggested in the old, pre-Berry Feeder method that people used in the early years of this website, when you'd have to open up a bunch of individual tabs and click one at a time with your mouse. (The Berry Feeder makes that look pitifully primitive in comparison.) I've found that above all Opera is the smoothest and quickest browser for mass-clicking, and every time I experiment with another one I become annoyed at how much slower it seems in comparison.

Anyways, onto the results. Unsurprisingly, I found that it took 3 minutes and 13 seconds to clear an entire page. I had already been aware that it always takes 3 minutes to get through a page just from keeping an eye on the time listed at the top of the site. I was less aware of the time it took to complete 300 interactions, the most allowed at a time in the Berry Feeder. I found that, to an almost alarming consistency, it took 24 seconds for each iteration, not accounting for the brief amount of time it takes to reach over and hit the "lap" button on my stopwatch app.

This was only done with one page, but on a larger scale I would imagine that the overall average would land at around 3 minutes per page and 24 seconds for each iteration of 300 interactions.

I've done marathon mass-clicking sessions a handful of times - essentially, starting exactly at reset and using the full 24 hours in a day to get as many interactions as possible. The most successful of these marathons is what got me my record daily interactions placement of #2, with 725,770 interactions in total.

There are as of now 167 pages of users. To get the most amount of interactions, you would need to use an Odd Incense, doubling the amount to 334 pages. Assuming it takes a flat 3 minutes to clear each page, and also assuming that you have unbroken attention and an iron will throughout the entire marathon, this comes out to 1002 minutes in total, or 16.7 hours. This is already obviously an agonizing amount of time, but you're going to have to add a few more to account for inevitable rest periods and lapses in attention, so we'll put the realistic amount in the ballpark of 18 to 20 hours.

This would fit the memory of my experience of the day I got my record. I actually ran out of stuff to interact with a few hours before reset, though I can't remember the exact time, and attempted to poke at the online users list a few times to squeeze out a few more interactions before deciding to call it a day.

The next part of this analysis is going to get a bit esoteric, but you're going to have to stick with me on this one. A big part of what makes mass-clicking so hard is the physicality of it, and the correct variables need to be in place so you don't hurt yourself. The correct positioning of my arms and fingers was something I had to figure out the hard way over time, and I've figured out a solution that avoids injury. A key part of this positioning I've identified is actually the keyboard I use, which is smaller and thinner than most conventional ones. This actually works in my favor because I can concentrate my exertion on a smaller area. In addition, the flatter keyboard design also means that pressing the keys themselves takes less effort and less time, increasing speed.

The keyboard I use is a Logitech K380 Wireless. This was difficult to get used to when transitioning from a larger keyboard, but I actually vastly prefer it now, and finding that it was good for mass-clicking was a bonus.

This positioning might work for other keyboard models, but I'm only able to reference my experience with this keyboard here. It's also going to be really hard to explain this without using a picture, and because it requires both hands, I can't really take one painlessly. With my wrists hovering above my desk/keyboard (like in your keyboarding classes of yore), I place the ring, middle, and pointer fingers on my left hand on the 1, 2, and 3 keys, and the middle and ring fingers on my right hand on the 4 and 5 keys. I then place my left thumb on the spacebar. I LIGHTLY press all of these buttons at once while the Berry Feeder is open. When 300 interactions are done, I wait for the tab to close and hit the spacebar again to quickly open another 300 interactions to go through.

If you work out the most comfortable positioning for yourself with those general guidelines, and LIGHTLY press with your fingers in a leisurely fashion (seriously, don't put your arms into it and don't flex your tendons, more passion isn't going to make things go faster and over time will actually make your performance worse), you'll find that you can avoid almost all of the pain I experienced when trying to figure out this optimization. In my early stages I actually temporarily shot the nerves in my arms and experienced a fair amount of soreness - little of that is present now, and I only start to feel any kind of pain or exhaustion over long periods of time.

In this vein, breaks, periods of focused rest (like power naps), and proper posture are extremely important to maintaining energy and health.

Other variables are going to affect the amount of interactions you'll get in any serious mass-clicking session, such as your own personal internet speed, how slow the website is at any given time, and the limits of your attention span and body. Theoretically, if you want to avoid the issue of running out of people to interact with to achieve the #1 daily interactions spot, you'll need to continuously interact with online users on a high multiplier, high activity day so that the frequent turnover of Pokemon and eggs will give you the boost you need to go over the top. The catch here is that the website will almost certainly be running a bit slower, and the constant attention you'll need to be giving to the users who are online will cut into your time. If you choose to attend to hatching eggs, that will also splinter your attention because they'll be hatching at a much faster rate.

Also, you're going to lose your mind if you solely focus on mass-clicking, so watch YouTube videos or TV or some other primary focus while you do it.

It is very important that I clarify that the intent of this post is to meticulously catalog a major part of my play style on GPX+ for any curious parties. It's also not meant to be a strict mass-clicking guide, merely an examination of how I do it. Most of all, I'm not here to brag. As a matter of fact, my strongest advice to anyone inspired to achieve ridiculous daily interactions records is that I'd highly suggest you don't do it at all, or at least only attempt it once if you have the innate stamina and determination. I've attempted to beat my record a few times since I made it, and each time I've failed due to determining that my pace was too slow and giving up half-way through or simply being unable to power through sheer physical exhaustion. Each time, the experience was a little more agonizing, and I'm honestly amazed I achieved the record I have to begin with. Mass-clicking on this scale takes so much out of me mentally and physically, and you shouldn't put yourself through that unless you're seriously committed.

Thank you for reading this breakdown what is surely the most insufferable play style of a cute animal raising website ever achieved.

This post has been edited by vendyjane: Oct 31 2019, 08:32 AM


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Tyranisaur
post Nov 1 2019, 12:47 PM
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I think a big reason why I haven't had much trouble with the ergonomics of doing interactions is that I have been clicking on laptops where I could position my wrist somewhere on the lower left part, so my wrist would remain in a fairly straight forward angle. Maybe there's also something to be said about which part of the wrist you let your hard rest on. I think you will have problems if you put the middle of the wrist down, but if you shift the weight onto the side opposite of your thumb, then that's better. In later times I've moved onto full keyboards, but with wrist rests, which I can recommend.

On a separate note, I wonder if you have tried to use the option to use the berry feeder in separate windows. I think it's poorly named, it opens in a tab. I think this has an advantage in terms of speed because you can load up instances of the berry feeder independently, but you also don't need to reload the list until you finish the page.


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Plain Jane
post Nov 1 2019, 05:24 PM
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QUOTE(Tyranisaur @ Nov 1 2019, 12:47 PM) *
I think a big reason why I haven't had much trouble with the ergonomics of doing interactions is that I have been clicking on laptops where I could position my wrist somewhere on the lower left part, so my wrist would remain in a fairly straight forward angle. Maybe there's also something to be said about which part of the wrist you let your hard rest on. I think you will have problems if you put the middle of the wrist down, but if you shift the weight onto the side opposite of your thumb, then that's better. In later times I've moved onto full keyboards, but with wrist rests, which I can recommend.

On a separate note, I wonder if you have tried to use the option to use the berry feeder in separate windows. I think it's poorly named, it opens in a tab. I think this has an advantage in terms of speed because you can load up instances of the berry feeder independently, but you also don't need to reload the list until you finish the page.


I use the option to open the Berry Feeder in separate windows, I just go through one tab (300 interactions) at a time, wait for the tab to automatically close and kick me back to the users list, hit spacebar again to load up another 300, and repeat until I'm done with the page. Then I just refresh that page once to make sure the feeder didn't skip some interactions, which it does sometimes. It WOULD be simpler for me to just open up every feeder window from the beginning, but I kinda like the flow of doing it one at a time. I don't know why, but doing the Berry Feeder in the same window is extremely annoying, and the archaic "in new windows" option is obviously nightmarish.

This post has been edited by vendyjane: Nov 1 2019, 05:26 PM


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Cytosine
post Nov 1 2019, 07:03 PM
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Wow this was intriguing to read. I never really knew how other people clicked, I just assumed that the way I was doing it was fine. I just use my left hand on the 1234 and space keys and my right hand on the trackpad so I can open a new berry feeder window. I tried using space like you said to open up a new window, but that doesn't work for me. I'm on Safari, which I suppose isn't the ideal browser, but hey it's got all my bookmarks and keychains on it so I haven't switched browsers ever.


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Breech Loader
post Nov 3 2019, 06:13 AM
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I just hammer the left mouse button repeatedly until my wrists fall off. I usually don't mind too much about which berries I click.
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