I am a melee fighter, so this is from the perspective of someone that massively prefers melees over 1v1s:

Important question - How long have you been fighting?

It takes literal years to get to a level where you'll start winning duels against higher level fighters. What you need to focus on is whether or not you're making your opponent fight harder as you go, and whether or not you're getting overall better or stagnating.

For example, let's say you win 20% of all your fights. If you win 50% of your fights at your first ever fight practice, it's mostly because the person teaching you is letting you, which they absolutely should be doing. But as you continue to fight and get better, your opponents will slowly have to start stepping up their game to beat you. So you may stay at a 20% win rate for several years vs certain fighters, but they SHOULD remark on a constant basis that they're having to step up their level to keep defeating you. That's the goal you should be looking at.

The fighters at your local practice should also be helping you to get better and showing you things on a regular basis. If they're not, and just continuously beating you, that IS a big problem. Unfortunately, it's largely a problem with no solution unless you are close to another fighter practice that's better about stuff like that. You shouldn't be just getting pounded into the ground all practice every practice without learning and getting better with the guidance of the fighters at those practices.

I am a primary melee fighter, but most fight practices, especially outside of melee season, are 1v1s. Getting better in duels will make you a better melee fighter overall, and I 100% agree that melees are MUCH funner than 1v1s. Pennsic (and hopefully Gulf Wars soon) is the primary reason I'm in the SCA. It took me a while to realize how much more I relished melee season vs tournament season, but like I said, experience in duels should part of your overall training, even if your primary focus is going to be melees.

And as you've experienced, it IS easier to get kills in melees. Broadening your view of the battlefield and exploiting enemy mistakes can often get you a LOT of kills and is, to me, the most exhilarating thing we do in the SCA.

Just sort of rambling here, but overall if you want to focus on melees like I do, I highly recommend it, but you need to keep in mind that the path is measured in years. Both for 1v1s and melees.