AC: Brotherhood multiplayer - Fail?

 Alright, I'm looking for the opinions of folks who have actually logged hours playing the multiplayer component of the new Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood game. What I'm trying to determine is whether the multiplayer component is actually working how it was intended.

For those who haven't played, here is what I believe was the developer's intent for the game mode: Players must use skills of stealth and detection simultaneously to blend into the crowd while also identifying and then assassinating the other players, who are similarly relying on stealth to evade death. You play as an assassin. You are assigned to murder other assassins. However, at the same time, you are being hunted by the same people you are trying to kill.

This, to me, sounds like an amazing experience. There may be other games out there with similar multiplayer components--some of the Splinter Cell games, maybe?--but I haven't played them. What is so intriguing about the concept and what made me so optimistic is that it seems the direct antithesis to the run-and-gun (or, rather, run-and-knife), hectic-ass multiplayer that has come to dominate XBox Live in games like Call of Duty and Halo. Rather than spring around like a  crazy person and flailing a submachine gun or ballistic knife in the opponent's face, players are expected to walk, calmly and slowly, through crowded halls and marketplaces, planning their assassination strategy and waiting for that perfect moment to silently shove a stiletto into the back of an unsuspecting passerby...

Sounds great, right?

Well, after spending maybe three hours with the multiplayer, I am finding that it disappoints severely. I did my best to blend in. I tried to mimic an NPC. I sat on a bench. I blended in to a conversation between villagers. I walked slowly and methodically to near my target without detection...

At the end of most matches, I had two or three kills.

The winner of the round would have between twenty and thirty.

I started to pay more attention to what the other players were doing. As I walked calmly through a plaza, four other players would come sprinting past me, in a line, each trying to stab the next. Someone would pounce on my from a rooftop, stab me, then rush off to murder someone else. Sprinting, jumping, more sprinting, more knifing... Kill after kill after kill after kill...

Now, I have written before on this very blog that, in all honesty, I'm not very good at video games. But this, to me, is not a question of good or bad. It's a question of playing a game as intended versus degrading it down to the level of every other multiplayer game out there. It seems to me there is no stealth to this game mode. It is still very much run-and-kill...

Is anyone else finding a similar experience? Is it possible I'm doing something wrong? What are your thoughts?