Missing Weather Effects in Pokemon GO

It’s funny how sometimes I miss really simple things. As I write this article, it has been raining outside. Not a huge amount, no floods or anything, but wet enough to warrant an umbrella. The sound of rain falling, alongside the odd splash of a car going through a puddle can often be quite relaxing. It’s also relaxing to sit inside on a rainy day, wrapped up and catching Pokemon with an incense.

What I also like about Pokemon GO is how the weather in the app matches the weather outside. Or, at least, it tries to. Lately though, Pokemon GO hasn’t really had any proper weather effects. While the weather boost is visible, the actual weather doesn’t appear outside of cloudy and clear. My favourite weather is rain, and I’ve always been a sucker for rain effects and the like.

Hasn’t been fixed for a while

Unfortunately, as of writing, the weather effects in Pokemon GO are still missing. It’s still constantly cloudy or clear, nothing else. What I find odd though is that night and day still work, as does the player’s shadow. The sky works, no problem. The rest of the world seems to work but the weather doesn’t. This means that we don’t get rain, snow or fog.

Okay, sure, I’ve never seen snow or fog before, but they would be nice to see in the future. Weather is mostly just a small detail, it’s not even vital to gameplay or anything. Actually, I say that, weather does 100% affect gameplay, after all, we get different boosts and spawns based on what the weather outside is. But the weather effects are cosmetic.

As for why the weather was disabled? Apparently it was causing performance issues, but also somehow also introduced an odd white flash, almost at random. The flashes are not a good thing and can cause physical problems, so, in order to stick a plaster/band-aid on the problem, they just disabled the weather in its entirety.

Curiously though, the confetti used on event days still works no problem. But I’d rather see rain than see confetti, as the confetti is a little bit over the top.

We’re probably better off without the weather

Sad thing is, I think most non-casual players probably prefer the lack of weather. Pokemon GO doesn’t run amazingly or consistently across most devices. People in snowy or rainy areas can run into performance issues, causing the game to slow down or lag. This is tolerable in PvE but is absolutely awful in the Go Battle League. After all, the GBL may be better than it used to be, but there are still problems at hand. So broken weather and the GBL together make a small problem worse.

Plus, well, laggy gameplay in a competitive setting is a lot worse than some cosmetic weather.

While I would like to see working weather in Pokemon GO, I don’t think it’s high on the list of Niantic’s priorities currently. There are plenty of other things that need to be fixed first.