Ooh, my favourite Pokémon topic to harp on? Yes, please!
I remain somewhat convinced that some higher-ups at Game Freak simply hate winter. Ice has been slapped down with every type of downside in the arsenal and then some. Ice-types remain unreasonably rare and hard to find, despite underwhelming battle performance. The designers insist on shoehorning Ice-types into the archetype of "slow and impervious, like a glacier, but also easily destroyed by the hand of a child, like a snowman". So they get a stat spread mostly tuned for slow and defensive play, but type chart interactions that grants no immunities and only a single resistance (Ice itself). The best Ice-type moves are Special, but Ice-types tend to favour physical Attack, whose attacks are cold garbage compared to what most other types have available. And of course, Ice-types are generally left with almost no coverage moves.
What bugs me most about Ice-types, though, is their terrible availabilty. I enjoy playing with Grass-, Bug-, and Poison-types despite them facing similar design challenges, so the specific woes of the Ice-type are neither unique to it nor a deal-breaker on their own. But Ice-type Pokémon are generally almost impossible to obtain and use throughout a regular game playthrough, because they are made available so darn late every time. They tend to be confined to a dedicated icy area, usually around the sixth or seventh Gym. By then, your in-game team will be well established, all six team slots full, and you have to drop a long-standing team member for what is likely to be a two-stage, slow and defensive Pokémon with movepool issues and no useful resistances.
Otherwise, you might jump through some hoops to find one or two Ice-types earlier in the game, but it usually involves beelining for rare encounters for in-game trades, evolving rare Pokémon into Ice-types (Shellder to Cloyster by using a Water Stone), or something silly like backtracking through an early-game cave obtaining Surf (Fridays only, of course). And even if you go through all that trouble, chances are you'll still get a weakling Pokémon with a terrible movepool, and it usually won't evolve until the mid-level-30's or so (of all the Ice-types that evolve by reaching a certain level, Smoochum is the earliest, at 30).
I believe one rarely discuss reason for this, though, is that Ice is stuck in a bit of a vicious cycle. Pokémon follows certain conventions, where some 'mons are designed to be found in the early-game, some in the late-game, and others at various points around the game's level curve. It would make no sense to introduce the Caterpie family in Victory Road, where the wild encounters are level 50. Likewise, you won't get a Moltres before the first Gym. All Pokémon have points in the game where it will be appropriate for players to find them. And most if not all Ice-type Pokémon were originally designed with that Gym-6-ish icy area in mind. That's why they evolve around the mid-late-level-30's, as players would encounter them a few levels below that. That's also when they begin to learn good moves by level-up. Over time, this means that the existing pool of Ice-type Pokémon all seem designed to be encountered in the mid-level-30's, so that's the point where the designers put the dedicated Ice-type area. And of course, any new Ice-type Pokémon are designed to be encountered in the new Ice-type area, which makes their appropriate introduction level ... mid-level-30's. Again.
And since their base forms are introduced so late, Ice-type Pokémon very rarely have three-stage evolution families. The Frigibax family is the first evolution family with three Ice-type stages since Gen V, and only the fourth overall. Every other type has at least six.
What really frustrates me about this, is that the designers are so reluctant to introduce any Ice-type Pokémon outside of that dedicated icy area. Even volcano-dwelling Fire-type Pokémon are often found in grasslands. Electric-types are commonly found outside of their more typical habitat, power stations. Any dark place at night can be a Ghost-type habitat, you don't need to wait until you find a haunted mansion (usually around the fourth Gym). But Ice-type Pokémon are so rarely seen outside their ordnary snowfields. It's not like they are too powerful for early-game, either. Swinub's BST (250) is lower than both Pidgey (251) and Rattata (253). Vanillite and Bergmite (305 and 304) are approximately as strong as Gastly and Abra (both 310). Snom's BST (185) is among the lowest of all Pokémon, lower than even Kricketot (194) and Caterpie (195). Of course, their late evolutions would make them very un-fun to catch in the early-game, as you would be stuck with those crapmon stats until approximately the point where your starter reaches its final form. But at least you'd get to use Ice-type Pokémon for the bulk of the story, instead of catching them right before the climax at the earliest.
So yeah, my hopes for Gen 10, like the previous ... five? generations before it, is that Game Freak finally manages to put an Ice-type or two in an early-game area, preferably ones that don't spend the entire game with crapmon stats and severe movepool issues. Among existing Pokémon, Snom is a good candidate since it has low stats and evolves through Friendship, meaning it can potentially evolve much earlier than others like Swinub or Spheal. Frosmoth is far from the Ice-type Volcarona we thought we'd get, so it wouldn't be too game-breaking either (as shown by the in-game-traded Snom in early SV). But really, a new three-stage Ice-type would be ideal. One that breaks the cycle of only being suitable for the seventh Gym or so. Come on, Game Freak, winter isn't that bad.
