Affinities - Yay or Nay?

[Hrdina_Imperia]

When I used to play Battle Forge in the (not that) good ol' days, I was really not liking cards with affinities. It felt to me as if they were 'tainted' (pun intended) with the little colorful orbs, that mostly didn't match the card colours. Also, this is also some weird past conjecture, but it felt to my old self, that 'pure' cards were better and more expensive in general.  

This is far past, but still, some remnant of affinity bias lingers for me. Obviously, the system has its uses, pros as well as cons. For example, in SR it has the additive benefit of basically providing two cards for the price (work load) of one. In terms of a new content, that is almost always welcome. 

Yet, I am wondering, if I am the only weirdo who felt this way? 

 

Some stats:

According to SR wiki, there are 404 unique cards.

246 have no affinity, 158 have affinity (thus being in essence 316 cards).

All in all, there are 562 cards (including Promos). 

[Metagross31]

To me it depends. For some cards, the affinities feel like a cheap way to just create more cards without providing a lot of diversity. In these cases, the two cards feel more or less the same to me.

In other cases, one affinity is clearly superior to the other, creating essentially a useless card.

In rare cases however, both affinities provide completely different playstyles which both have their unique nieche. In these cases, affinities are awesome!

 

In general, I think the best way to go is what Windhunter wrote in the card design document - make affinities where they make sense, don't make them, when they feel unnecessary.

[Raxaaa]

when you play some expert-maps alone...

sometimes it is great to have 2 strong cards for better cooldowns and the often you can use them.

[Kapo]

I think we are used to it right now how it is, but I think a game that wouldn't have any affinities (but more different cards) would be more elegant, I think.

[Hrdina_Imperia]

15 hours ago, Kapo said:

I think we are used to it right now how it is, but I think a game that wouldn't have any affinities (but more different cards) would be more elegant, I think.

Indeed, that seems to be my feel right now as well.

Funnily enough, Affinites feel like a system that could've arisen in SR era as a way to provide more content for less work 🤔

[Kapo]

7 minutes ago, Hrdina_Imperia said:

Indeed, that seems to be my feel right now as well.

Funnily enough, Affinites feel like a system that could've arisen in SR era as a way to provide more content for less work 🤔

Yeah, funny that way back when as a commercial product the paid people dished out cheap content for profit - and now, the volunteer project has an almost too high standard when releasing a card  😃

Thinking about this, there will come a time, where the need will arise to add some filler cards for Amii to make the faction more complete.

Edited August 18, 2023 by Kapo

[Draconnor]

Affinities are must have when you can't make unlimited numbers of nwe models.

While half of cards are simply better/worse ... part of them are indeed situational and give real decisions and deck diversity.

[honorabili]

My strategy when starting to play again now is first I will make all my pure decks before moving on to hybrid factions and specialty decks.