You can lose points? Polarizing the score would NOT help fallen party to catch up

http://i.imgur.com/plSP7Qf.png
Basically if you fall behind at the start, it's going to be VERY hard to catch up...

Yes and being far behind does not encurage serious play. Bad for morale. If a GC get zerged it has pretty much lost. But it does encurage different tactics than mindless zerging. Thats good. Cooperation is also much more importan from the get go.

I would have to see how many points the different ranks of nodes give out. It's all RNG on where they spawn and how effective your party members can be at obtaining and holding the nodes, which have a priority system in their own right. If a team has >100 from the get-go AND the end, that just means they were just playing it like it was a Deathmatch or something, and that is not how you win Seize.