"Worthy backups" is an interesting term. Right now many are aiming for the top 20 in the hopes of riches.

Reducing that incentive can go two ways: one, it will eliminate the backup witnesses that are doing the bare minimum and have no genuine interest in supporting the Steem blockchain while begging for votes so they may profit (thereby empowering "worthy backups") or, two, it will discourage the witnesses that are genuinely interested (aka are "worthy backups") and are skilled at maintaining reliable servers but lack the finances.

I would think that the emphasis would be on option one. We launched our witness purely to support the blockchain and to build off it but I can't speak for others.