I think the issue is kinda that the first person melee genre is like, inherently ass and unpopular?

The thing people always whip out is "ooo you have to fight like a ballerina I don't want to learn tech" but if the game doesn't have mix, it's shit. swing manipulation is what differentiates slashers from something like for honor, and if swing manipulation doesn't give you mix, the game is going to suck to sink your teeth into into in any kind of way. in Chiv you end up with a game where both guys are just swinging into the other dude's guard hoping the other guy makes a mistake because that's the only way you're getting an opening- and even made so bad for "serious" play, it's still not raking in huge playercounts.

>tl;dr nobody has figured out how to make chiv-based slashers both genuinely fun to play and accessible without compromising the genre entirely and turning it into some other thing