Team GO Rocket Balloons give Pokemon GO players the opportunity to battle Team GO Rocket Grunts and, if they have activated a Rocket Radar, Team GO Rocket Leaders. However, these balloons have not been appearing in Pokemon GO for the past several days, and some fans may be wondering about what is going on. Shining some light on this matter is the exact purpose of this guide, and players that read on will know why they are not currently encountering Team GO Rocket Balloons.
To put things simply, Pokemon GO developer Niantic is investigating "errors associated with Team GO Rocket encounters" at the time of writing, and the related balloons have been made "temporarily unavailable" while that investigation is underway. All of this was confirmed by the Niantic Support Twitter account in a Tweet made on April 9, and it is further indicated that updates on the situation will come from that same account as soon as they are available.
With resect to the specifics of the "errors" referenced by the Tweet, it appears that some players' devices were freezing when they attempted to interact with Team GO Rocket Balloons in PoGO. While there were several workarounds for the issue, such as entering and exiting a team leader battle before interacting with a balloon, those were certainly not known by all players. As such, temporarily disabling the Team GO Rocket Balloons does seems like the cleanest solution.
Unfortunately, there is currently no information on when the aforementioned updates will come, and players will need to busy themselves with some of the game's other activities while they wait for Team GO Rocket Balloons to make their return. For example, fans can currently work on Pokemon GO's Season of Legends Special Research or even the All-in-One 151 Masterwork Research. Indeed, these offerings give players the chance to earn a variety of rewards, and they are certainly not the end of what is available in-game right now.
Once the Team Go Rocket Balloons do return, players will be able to easily do battle with Cliff, Sierra, and Arlo in PoGO. Defeating these Leaders may not be such a simple endeavor, though, as some of their lineups can pack quite a punch. Fans may thus want to spend some time getting solid counters in order while the balloons are absent so that they can dispatch these foes without issue when they are back in the game.
Pokemon GO is available on Android and iOS.