That does sound like a good idea. I especially like the idea of changing weapon decay. I'm not sure, but this just MIGHT be do-able with scripting, although slightly complicated, using OnPlayerDeath, GetPlayerWeapon (or whatever it's called), and SpawnWeapon (i forget what thats called to). Maybe it could get a players weapon when he dies, spawn it where he died, but with a set decay time (i believe this is a parameter in SpawnWeapon, but im not sure)? And this value could be an editable constant in the script (the decay time).
^Im not sure how much of that is right, I haven't worked with a script in months, but i think thats about right.^
Weapon Decay FTW,
Chuck.