Solely changing the base amount of points is rather a cosmetic thing. Does it matter if it is 40-40, 15-15, or 100-100? I don't think so, but you can prove wrong.
What matters is how rapidly the difference between points for winner and points for loser changes.
It's probably hard to understand what I'm talking about so here's an example

:
40-40
39-41
36-44
33-47
30-50
etc...
Now just changing the base amount:
25-25
24-26
22-28
20-30
etc...
This is basically the same, you reach the minimum of 1 point for a win (and maximum of 49 for a loss) in the same amount of games. Bear in mind also, that if you change the amount of points moving between games, you'd also want to reset the stats of all players, since the existing ratings don't tell the correct picture anymore.
But you can tweak the
k factor in ELO formula (Monkeyisland will probably know what that is) and change the amount of games one needs to win in order to reach minimum of earned points, so you get something like this:
40-40
39-41
35-45
32-48
30-50
29-51 <-- notice the change being smaller from here on
28-52
27-53
Hope this made any sense