What stops people who get bad starts, or just lose hope in a game to leave and join another?

As soon as the possibility of getting points is gone, people will leave. This will make for a broken game.

No risk, no reward.

More games played = more points.
Most games played = Not the best player (usually)

Nothing stops them from leaving, and that's the point. You don't have to worry about "losing your hard work" because of bad luck.

Each individual 'game' isn't fun to play when you have a horrible start. It wastes your time sticking around for the dom bar to come up so you don't lose 75% of the table's value.

If someone wants to get into the top players.. and they want to play a lot.. who cares? Right now the top players spend countless hours on here anyways, it will even out.

If the scoring system is also changed to only reward big points to 1st and 2nd place,the addicts who are in the top now will still be up there because: they come in high ranks frequently and they are constantly playing games.

When you don't have to worry about losing points you can have more fun by actually playing the game. And that's what kdice is about isn't it?

Only way I forsee this working is if points were only awarded for first place. Tiered tables would have to be done away with as well.

sorry but it really is a bad idea. I don't see a single positive aspect to only awarding + points

If you want to evolve towards something without negative points, eliminate points completely then... just base ranks on win% + 1/2 2nd% + 1/4 3rd% + 1/8 4th%

I also thought about the scoring system many times... I came to the conclusion that it is similar to the principle of Democracy actually!

My teacher once said "Democracy is the worst concept of how to govern a country...Yet it is the only one which works".

...
My point is, that if you change the scoring system you would inevitably mess the "table system", too. I actually think that Ryan did a brilliant job when he created this grading system, because it works so well considering that a competition takes a whole month.

On the other hand, I must agree that you are right when you say that some point losses (for 6th or 7th in particular) are really frustrating sometimes.
However, I couldn't think of any way to improve it without messing up something of the current system...

Sadly, NightEternal has a point

"" My teacher once said "Democracy is the worst concept of how to govern a country...Yet it is the only one which works". ""

I believe it is: Democracy is the worst system of government, except for everything else.

wait- were we talking about the scoring system?

"As the month progressed, the higher table numbers would mean that either a) a person played a lot of games, or b) a person won a lot."

by mainly basing your scoring on #wins, you would eliminate the chances for those rare but exceptionally good players that manage to get top100 or even top25 in less than 100 games. In your point scoring system, there is no significant advantage anymore for a player to be good at kdice (anybody can get enough wins to make it at the "10k" table then). You will just encourage every single player to play a lot of games or -worst case scenario- more teams will be formed.

I agree that the big point losses for last/6th can be painful. I doubt you ever had them at a 10k table but trust me, -3k hurts. I rarely see someone really complain after such a -3k loss because the more experienced players at the 10k realise it comes with the game. The more there is to lose for 6/7, the more there is to gain for 1/2. It's your job to get as few 6/7 as possible and as many 1/2 as possible. + it's not impossible to win from a bad start you know

Basing points on the number of wins would eliminate the diplomacy of the game, though.

Why would anybody truce if only one person is going to get points?