Why exactly would RS not work without skill levels? If you want to hold your prestige in your ability to grind skills I suggest you stick to the main game. The idea of training skills or completing quests in a survival style game simply doesn't work. It requires far too much of an investment for the new player to place themselves on an equal level as other players. If players are required to re-level their skills every time they die, it will just reach a point where these players are preyed on before they are able to put up a fighting chance, and once they're killed, of course it's back to square one. This time investment just fundamental doesn't work for survival games. Can you imagine if in H1Z1 you had to spend a week grinding, learning to build a gun? The game would be dead, nobody's willing to put that amount of time to make their character viable, especially when there's no telling how long this character is going to last. Deadman needs players to have access to all content as soon as they spawn/respawn. This makes fishing food, mining essence, and crafting runes all short term goals to gather materials which allow the player to once again enter the contest for survival. Now consider that same process, but with skill requirements. Are players going to be willing to invest that amount of time, levelling up skills, into their character every time they die? I'm going to assume not. It might seem like fun at first, but for the longevity of this game mode it could be detrimental. Finally, please remember that this is, at it's core, a PvP survival game mode. Do we really want to put more barriers between players and balanced PvP?