I am sure that developer decided on making the 1v1 maps like so for the sake of game balance (maps that have slight or more advantages for some roster, and strong disadvantage to some roster as well)

ex:
1. on the small space on a bridge, heavy/Hybrid like Lawbringer can get environtmental kill easily.
2. small space on pagoda that has walls, and hole. In which gives Nobushi character unable to heavy attack, as her weapon get halted by the wall surroundings.

it is fun to push opponent in matter of seconds, but it is not fun as a victim (because the 'thrill' have not started yet, therefore there are annoying feeling from such instant lost), giving that and I believe that most of the roster are not balanced yet (as it is still early after betas and release), I really do not think that the decisions on these maps are a starting kit for 1v1 duels. Why? because I love that 'thrill' of having 1v1 (like boxing match), fighting 'honorably'. By that I mean 2 players facing each other, and see who is going to make mistake 1st,

I do not like how if a player make a mistake, they are being punished brutally without giving a slightest chance or gap that player can figure how to be flexible. The only chance that a punished player to be able to get out of that brutal combo is to see if the attacker make a mistake in their combo, the actions, animations and executions are just too stiff to be able to be flexible and creative.

by flexible and creative I mean:
there are some characters that have very small chance against some characters that are 'fast' enough to attack before being attacked.

take Nobushi vs Kensei for example; I believe it 80% winrate is on Kensei. why? because even if Nobushi want to execute light attack, the animation is just too slow compared to Kensei's brutally fast top attack + combo. if Nobushi being defensive, 90% of the time she is not attacking (oh.. so the win chance is the ledge now? no fun, and that if Kensei would allow him to be kicked.)

there are no flexibility than all known combo (because there are only combos that are expectable, that many people know, and that same trick cant be improvised to make surprise element.) I am not inexperienced playing, but if you are getting surprise attack, it is probably the chains of attack that players already well known they are going to do this and that, and while you are getting chained brutally, you can just watch with mind of ("ofcourse, of course, and of course").

If the argument about game balance saying that if each players can come out with unique chains, and that will make the game too hard because there are no memorable combos? I really do not think that is the case. Because so far I can only feel a slight of monotonic feel to the game.

in all, I love this game, because of it's unique gameplay, I want to support this game, I hope the dev team could understand what I am trying to say, and also share the real vision of the game to us, that I might hugely misunderstood.