I completely disagree.
No player I've met has had a defence that cannot be broken through, and while there has been some really long duels, I cannot say I haven't enjoyed them.
When two people of equal (and great) skill meet, the duel turns into more of a mindgame - and nothing wrong with that since out-smarting your opponent is, imo, as much a part of the game as being able to do 50 feints/sec to fool him.
If you want higher gamespeed, there are other servers, in other mods for that.
EDIT: Yes, polestun is fucking stupid, but that's already been said 1000 times
is not ME that want higher gamespeed. is really a lot of people that want that AND it's a way to rebalance the fact that in a year, cRPG fighting speed slowly became what is now. slow.
and yes. when players with similar above average skill are fighting, they will just continue swing, block, feint, block, hold, block so on until the rest of the players kills each other. that's why usually a teamplay minded player will give up the duel and go help somewherelse leaving that skilled enemy blocker to do the same.
and about polestun, yes said 1000 times but people just retire and reroll polearms because they offer many fighting styles and roles plus the stunlock ability.
This mod is not intended for duel, it's intended for large scale battles, remember Pub Crawl!!
that's why i say that. now the average skill is so high that an average manual blocker can block anything besides facing phyrex, bjord, tempest, rubicon.
even i (average skilled die hard 2handed) can block a lot in 1vs1 and sometime even in 1vs2 when focusing on blocking.
not to mention that in siege servers, the running speed / fighting speed is even slower than battle.