Playing any versus game is inherently boring to me. I never played CF to fight other characters.
You tend to play evil murder alls, so it's about builds, hunting and execution, which all go into the actual fight. There are a million games that offer the same exact thing. It's not unique to CF, and it's not interesting to me. Why the hell would I want to waste my time theorycrafting about PK builds, trying them, deleting them when they don't work, and starting the process over with something new.
You actually seem to think CF is a competetive game.
I think it's that you doesn't understand the essence of CF.
It's a role playing game that has PK, not the other way around, and that makes a very big difference.
You would likely never play an elf acolyte concerned with never killing a single PC.
Those players aren't building a char with the idea of how effective it will be in PK, they're coming up with a concept for a char they want to play out.
Your approach to CF is fundamentally different than mine, but don't think that I don't understand your POV on this or that somehow I don't get the essence of PK. I understand everything you say on it, and I reject it 100% in the sense of that aspect of CF holds no allure to me presently. Fact is once I became able to not die every time I got attacked, I stopped worrying about PK. You think landing a KB is some achievement? That it matters? I'd play CF with no player killing, hell, I would prefer it immensely and probably would still be playing, but I doubt you would.
You see it as a competitive game against other players.
Where the second you realize your char build is flawed and not viable in PK you delete, for example your storm mariner that realized his bearcharge didn't lag.
I see CF as a chance to play a char in a fantasy world. Interactions drive the immersion and make it interesting. I think Murphy's take on it is accurate. Interactions, conflicts, they drive the game. PK, to the extent they are informed by those things, is fine and plays a part. But the very act of PK as a stand alone entity, from theorycrafting a build, to gathering gear, to hunting a target is a meaningless exercise that to me is no different than playing any FPS online.