duels are lame because they are most predictable outcome as not everyone is constanlty wearing a spike armor, people open to attacks either don't know about self-ko or don't care at all for being attacked
if there was a way to turn off being target for duel there would be no more duels, thus if you think about a way to switch on/off available for pvp you should add some bonus for being open to target. currently, that would be partaking in a town. don't want duel? don't join friends and be a lone wolf on the west. you can only have friends and allies if you are willing to at least kys every 72h. you could totally add something like being left with 1% of your life and that counts as a knock out for 72h, but the thing is there is no penalty for actually dieing in the game. dead? drink a tonic and you are good to go back to work. wth??
death should give you an obligatory 8h sleep in hotel because... man you died!! since death means nothing people don't mind, only the loss of energy is a bummer when it comes unnanounced and the money you earn from duel you could earn in 5 minutes of farming without harm to others.
knock out and death should be different things, death applying 8h of locked hotel and knock out only putting you away from duels for 24h. now, why would you not be on this safe-duel system? only if the open pvp had some kind of reward for being there. you can switch world pvp on/off in wow but you earn more rewards when it's on; people at times don't attack each other solely because of that and prolly is just that both are seeking the bonus. to be 8h bed ridden, being a target must have a big reward for that.
i thought about... knocking out someone gives you a bonus, killing someone gives you a better bonus and ending the killing spree of another dueller reaps his stacked bonuses [these don't pass foward], so activelly going after duels would grant you a benefit and not only the risk of being away for 8h.
but since none gotta happen to make duels interesting again, get out of town or kys with a friend and drink a wonder tincture. no one in their sane mind sleeps for 8h, only the people who don't know there is a sleeping set. this is the kinda of intel you only discover when people tell you that lol