Please Keep The Gold Pokestops and Leafy Decorations

For Halloween, Pokemon GO had a small, visual update. The over-world map was spruced up with Halloween-y decorations, and were also upgraded to be a little more accurate. We also got orange Pokestops and carved pumpkins to match the Halloween mood. Alongside the visual changes, we also got a nice remix of the music from Lavender Town, all the way back from gen 1. After the Halloween event though, all the vibrant autumn colours disappeared and we returned to that old, familiar, infinitely green or blue over-world.

Frankly, the Halloween over-world looked great, and it was a shame that it disappeared. We should have more weather changes like that.

Granted, sometimes it is snowy in Pokemon GO. But I’ve never managed to see snowy weather in Pokemon GO. Or in general over the last decade or so.

Only for very special events.

Unfortunately, these sort of extra decorations are always just kept for special events, including Halloween. The few times we’ve had special worlds though have been mostly for GoFest. For example, there were weird portals in the sky when Hoopa was slowly being trickled out. Hoopa is known for creating portals and the like, and was part of the reason why there were many different Legendaries wandering about. We’ve also had fireworks occasionally.

But most of the time, the in-game climate is generally the same old look. On some occasions, we get confetti falling down and that’s kinda about it. The confetti isn’t always a good thing. It makes weaker phones struggle a bit.

We need to change the catch screen too!

It’s oooold. The catch screen is so, so old. Yet it’s remained pretty much the same for years now. The same old trees, the same old grass. It’s only really when it’s snowing or raining that there’s a bit of a difference. But the backgrounds and stuff are still the same, just darkened and with added weather effects.

Thing is, Pokemon GO has biomes, based on the real-world maps from Open Street View. The game at least knows whether you’re in a woodland area, near the sea or a normal town space. So why can’t we get a few different backgrounds, even if it’s just for those.

It’d be nice to spruce things up a bit.

We don’t even have to make everything special. The appearance of golden yellow Pokestops are a nice flash of colour on an otherwise green and blue map. The pumpkin Pokestops we had for Halloween were cool as well. There’s no reason to have everything always the same. Heck, even seasonal Pokestops would be quite nice. Any colour will do, except for pinks and purples. Just so people can see when a Pokestop is on cooldown. Oh and, of course we need to make sure we match seasons across the planet. I suppose Australia and New Zealand would like to have a summer season when it’s winter for the Northern Hemisphere. Gotta make those seasons accurate.

In the mean time, it seems a shame that the over-world in Pokemon GO is so… samey.