Make all items degradable, problem solved.
The frustration this would cause.
The sink idea seems too artificial. Items should naturally get in and out of the game as people play it, the economy shouldn't require people to throw items down a well because the staff team asks for it.
The idea has nothing to do with staff, it would be a feature. It's about as artificial as elemental whips being a whip sink.
Posted an idea in staff chat about death timer, may as well copy it here to see what people think of it:
How about a new system where items disappear one at a time in 5 minutes? The sooner the player gets back the more items they can get back.
I thought of something as simple as that every 300/x seconds an item is randomly selected and disappears. Where x is the number of items the player lost. Items will still become visible for others after 1 or 2 minutes. If the player loses 3 items then the first item disappears after 100 seconds, the 2nd after 200 seconds and last after 300 seconds. With 10 items lost the first item disappears after 30 seconds, so 2 items would disappear before others even see them (for guaranteed sink), while still allowing anyone to pick up 8 of the items if they get there after 1 minute.
items aren't prioritized in any way, so the more items the player has the higher the risk of losing expensive items quickly
the problem I have is that the current system is either 100% safe or 100% items lost, which is difficult to balance.
RNG generally translates into frustration, while I don't disagree that the current system is difficult to balance, this isn't the way I'd like it to be.
Maybe we could, instead of the items dropping on the ground instantly, add death's room (just like in rs3
), and they'd be dropped on the floor once you leave the room. This idea has a fair amount of drawbacks though.