Day of Defeat Source had a game mode, but I can't remember the name.
Basically you start with a really bad weapon, then on your first kill you graduate to a slightly better weapon, and with each kill your weapon is replaced with one a bit better. I think the second last one was a rocket-launcher, followed by just a combat knife.
I can't recall if dying meant you lost rank -- I think depending on host-settings it varied, but sometimes I would maintain my weapon when I respawned, sometimes I would be down a rank. It would perhaps also make sense to have an option where being killed puts you down at the bottom. It increases the spread of player scores as it becomes easier to get kills the more kills you make.
A nice twist would be the opposite -- starting with the best weapon, and with each kill getting a slightly worse one. This will keep scores relatively close, as it requires more skill to get more kills between each death.
It was a team-based mode (free-for-all would be chaos -- up to the design of the game if that's a good thing or a bad thing).
Jibb