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The decline in CF player base comes from the same reason that gives it numbers.
That is addiction to the game.
The problem is the game for most people becomes very addictive. The game makes you end up spending a lot of time playing. Usually more time than you want too. It is for this reason you quit.
In fact, many people on some level so badly want to unhook themselves they don’t
mind being destructive. Crossing the line, either IC or OOC. Because if their character gets booted from the cabal they can delete and be free of CF (for a bit  )
Shokai made some good points about deleting. But people aren’t deleting because they lost their nice eq. It is because the death allowed them a moment of clarity which they could use to rid themselves of CF. Frequently they get re-addicted and roll up a new character at some stage afterwards (often right away!)
Since addiction is the very reason that gives CF its numbers, there is very little the imms can do to stop people quiting. The only solution is to increase the number of new players. Which I am sure they are trying, but it must be a lot harder to get people to play a text based game now compared to ~ 1996.
As for perma-grouping, I always thought this name was a bit too black and white. I will also exclude “same lab” from this discussion because this is probably rare these days.
It is much more common for people to be “frequent-groupers”. That is there is very little (if any) organization about times to play. So each player will play a certain amount of time on their own and during times they are both on at the same time, they will then form a group. This is not really cheating unless they use an ooc chat program to pass information that they can’t do with a group tell.
As Jhyrb put it further down, many people find it fun to interact with friends that have picked up over the years playing CF. I think the imms are willing to let it slide as long
as you are a frequent grouper and not a perma grouper.
I think CF is more social if you can frequent group from time to time because one of the reasons why we quit (or take a break) from CF other than the amount of time invested is that it is anti-social. Being able to group with someone you known OOC (from previous cf chars) makes the game a little less anti-social.
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