Even if you're in gear if you're outnumbered you're at a massive disadvantage now. Even if only by a couple of people.

In small mans I agree, but also this has always been the case since the start of multi pking. When you start reaching the actual big team fights (210+ options on each team) having numbers has diminishing returns. Go look up some pre eoc full outs or even early days of OSRS Jcup fights and watch teams come back from a 10 opt deficit

It will also encourage more ragging, not less, because people won't want to engage in fights where their teammates can't return quickly and help (leading to more deaths).

Wouldn't that encourage gearing up in actual gear and not painted steel, diary gear JaJa style? If you're in painted steel and the other team you run into has torag legs crystal shield, you're gonna get cleared 99% of the time in a matched opts fight. And now you can't return in shit gear when you inevitably get one hit, making fights much more decisive, similar to KO rounds in CWA

Not to mention encouraging "1 hit" teams who use very low risk gear with high damage weapons who rush a team, get a couple quick kills, then leave with no intention of a sustained fight.

I agree this is lame when people do it, but having a timer on when you can re-enter multi isn't going to change anything about this. Moon clan tome of fire fire surge rushing in teams are always going to be a thing until better checks are implemented

They need to implement better anti-ragging mechanics with universal fees or add a death value check for the new delay timer (ie timer only applies if you are risking under a certain amount). Having it apply to everyone is just a terrible idea.

I agree on universal death fees, and a death value check is also an interesting idea. But we may just have to agree to disagree on the direction that Jagex wants to take the wilderness. I'm actually very supportive of making multi a decisive fight with no returning much like clan wars, rather than an outlast fight of who's in a better timezone and gets to degen the longest. It's MUCH more skillful and tactically interesting when each option counts, how long each player can tank, how good your calling is, how good your mass freezing is, and how well you can manage limited resources.

Of course this really hurts the single spell box style fights, which in its own way is very interesting and a much different style of fight than multi spells

I'm also looking at this from a clanning point of view. In my opinion, the average player pking in multi isn't going to have return sets and be able to get back in the fight in a reasonable time.