Personally I feel that what Reddit has been using for nearly 20 years was successful because it worked, the negativity that inevitably comes with large groups of people was the only issue and a lot of Lemmy users think it's the basic systems that worked.

Karma added a little boost to activity and engagement, while upvote/downvote helped curate content at a site wide level.

The value of these made up points is directly correlated with the size of the overall group and the larger Lemmy grows, the more it will have the same issues, it's just a matter of how long we get to enjoy this environment before it outgrows us etc.

The only important thing is that while we still can, we try to reinforce to people that the vote itself is matter of quality and appropriateness to the community the comment/post is in, as apposed to whether the thing is liked etc.