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Good game design is ultimately a matter of generating appropriate reactions in players.  Analyzing how people feel about games they've played (and why) can suggest new ways for a designer to elicit (or avoid) particular reactions.  Making lists of things that contribute to an overall 'chess-like' impression seems like a pretty reasonable thing for chess variant designers to spend time doing.

Assigning actual point values is probably reaching beyond the available data, though.  Verify your models carefully before you trust them.