I don't see how increasing the point values would make the pit more enticing. It would just increase everyone's points by an equal amount, so everyone would still be at the same rank. Where's the difference?
Most competitive fellowships probably clear all the waypoints except for the 300 point ones in the third stage where they take a single path and do the tricolors as well. This strategy gets them to the pit and the rounds of the pit earn them more than the waypoints left undone. Occassionally one of the stage three 300 point waypoints not on their path through is easy enough to do, but often the call for 40 blacksmiths, or 15 statues makes skipping those waypoints give you a higher score overall. By raising the value of the Pit you would make more waypoints worth skipping. And, as you said, that would get you to the Pit faster.
Unfortunately, getting to the Pit faster won't make the fellowship more competitive and that is what's really lacking. My own fellowship goes all out every three FA's and we usually achieve a top 10 finish. But while that's impressive, we don't end up higher than 5th (3 times) because the distances between the top 5 or so fellowships are usually measured thousands and thousands of points. The number one fellowship in Khelonar finished the last FA with over 150,000 points, the second place had over 120,000, third over 88,000, fourth over 61000 and fifth over 57000. As you can see the distances between each rank are huge. Making the Pit worth more wouldn't change the order much, if at all.
In reality the real competition in the FA is between the 4th and 20th range where as little as 50 points separates the fellowships, and where at least bragging rights gives you something beyond the paltry bonuses for finishing as you do.
If there is a "problem" with the whole FA it's probably nothing the devs can fix as there are fellowships large enough, strong enough, and organized enough, to tear their cities apart, put in huge FA Farms and just overwhelm the competition. And, in some ways, that's the whole point of a fellowship competition, isn't it?
So, in the end I'd have to give this a thumbs down as it really doesn't fix any problem.
AJ
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