As far as anyone has said so far, the timing aspect of curation will not change.  Rather, it will continue as it has before. What could change, supposedly, is the number of individuals who will be trying to upvote, and that could make timing more critical than its been for a while.

Personally, I don't see that changing, but who knows.

The change to 50/50 isn't the only thing that will affect awards, though. The convergence linear curve is going to do something, along with the ability to freely downvote however many they end up giving out a day.

If fewer folks get upvotes but those who do end up with more upvotes packing in at 12, 13, 14, and 15 minutes, I'm not sure what that does with curation. As it is, most of the Big Fish don't really even upvote that quickly, because they've been following a curation trail of some kind, and those don't normally upvote so quickly, due to their own curation procedures.

So, penalties still there, but potentially creating the crowding the penalties were designed to discourage (who knows).