It'd be much better if life was more expensive than any gear you had. The direct problem that would follow is that dying is too easy.
Yeah. Hell, when I was on the BOS Navarro investigation quest I just dumped all my gear and made a series of suicide runs into the base. Which, when you think about it, is ridiculous.
But yeah, the problem is that dying is less important than your gear. But if you want to make death significant, you have to erase all the ways of dying which you couldn't have prevented. And that's a whole different problem.
I have only just now realised that the BOS knew exactly what the giant red object in Navarro was, and were just trying to get rid of me. Those
bastards.