CF would be a better place, sort of, if sportsmanship was required, but it isn't. It would probably also be a bit more dull of a game though, if everything ended with good fight, and there was no real risk in dying.
And there will always be the rare griefing assclown players that drive people away or turn them off to CF, just as there are in every multi player game across time.
But to a much larger degree, there always be what a player perceives is griefing or other poor behavior that really is perfectly acceptable, and leave because of that.
(I'll leave out Imm stuff and all the other non-player controlled reasons why people stop)

It's funny how many people talk about CF where looting and death is just "part of the game" and "this isn't hello kitty" but then it turns out that it only applies when they aren't the one getting stomped on.

I think it was Daev or Zulgh who said we all want to be Rambo, not the guy he mows down.

Nothing worse than the OOC rants of the defeated to kill a desire to play CF.
I wonder if for all the people who hate Beront's chars, he massacred them and looted them cause they shit talked him first?
In all his iterations I ever played with in CF, he was always deadly and efficient, but he was never a dick to a single one of my chars, friend or foe.
And he murdered the shit out of a lot of them, and not once did he ever full me, or really heavily loot me when he could have.