Disclaimer: I am a relatively new player and would call myself optamistically average when it comes to pk. The following is entirely my opinion and may be miles off base.

My personal frustration with the two mentioned cabals is there is quite often a choice you have to make on creating certain character builds: will I be involved in cabal wars to a meaningful degree or will I be in one of these cabals. The elite of the elite are excluded from this, and if this is by design that's fine and the rest of this post can safely be ignored.

Take entropy, for instance. Most of the classes can just go outlander and for better or worse have superior powers, a reasonable expectation of allies in a pinch (be that for pk, exploration, whatever) and good back and forth between cabals. You will be lucky to get one of these things in Entropy, which for me at least kills any real enthusiasm I have upon starting up a character. I personally like soloing better but after 200 hours not so much, and I doubt I'm alone in that. I don't actually know how this can be fixed for entropy because the powers are so devisive. Some people like them, but most people don't and this is a case where majority opinion matters in most cases.

Second disclaimer: Scarab is my favourite cabal. That said I think if this had members it'd work just fine. It has great powers, a strong identity and a reason to be hated by everyone. It just doesn't have people in it and therefore is meaningless in the scope of the CF world. People complain about Maran reqs but you'll probably have to do equivalent or more to get into Scarab, which just isn't conducive to having an active cabal with the current population. The process also isn't particularly transparent (probably by design), which most likely just makes people feel like they're stuck.

Tldr: Cabals don't matter unless people join them. I'm not sure much more can be done regarding Entropy without coder help, which we've been told is off the cards currently. I think Scarab won't be relevant sans elite players without reducing how hard it is to get in, but that might not be a direction that is wanted either.

(Also #justiceforchaoticconjurers).)