This is a pretty difficult question to answer. My best analogy is some tough math. It'll take a while to learn it but once you know how, it's just a matter of doing it. So there is certainly a time commitment that doesn't go away but this stumbling around in the dark doesn't last forever.
For instance my combination of a few days on the forums and a few weeks lurking has resulted in me knowing the bare basics of map editing and a good amount about Pokemon and Trainer editing. I found that editing Pokemon and Trainers is rather self-explanitory, but Advance Map while important is significantly harder to learn. The thing is if I only knew what buttons to click to do what, all I would need to do is click some buttons to say edit map transitions.
Compare that to trying to make a custon sprite to add in a Pokemon. I theorized that if I swiped some images off the web and shopped them I could make a few easy sprites. A hour and a half later all possibilities of this happening were pretty much shot down. I settled for editing already made sprites, making my "new" Pokemon look rather similar to Hoothoot with brain damage. If I spent some more time I could make something decent, but that defeated my original idea of trying to make a lot of unique sprites in a small amount of time. Making an image isn't complicated (even though I made it so XD) but it needs time and effort.
So I don't have a lot of experience on the matter, but I'm about 90% sure this is how it goes. In a way there are two different types of hard; figuring stuff out, then commitment.
