Question about the maths behind attack roll and defense rolls

[Kromm]

I'm not sure whether longer or shorter fights best characterize matches between masters. "Master" has many meanings. In real life, masters tend to size each other up and then shoot in; one gets the upper hand due to a tiny difference in technical skill; and it's over in seconds. In movies, masters duel for five or six pages of script, sometimes more.

However, I'm also not sure why long is necessarily bad. Why shouldn't a life-or-death struggle use up a little more game time than other things? Flow is one thing; pacing is another. It's hard to pace a game where the most critical contests take less time than long stretches of less-critical development.