Swapping factions is not something you’re intended to regularly interact with. Rather it’s a failsafe. If you chose a faction, find that faction really doesn’t match your playstyle, you don’t have to re-start from scratch with a new character, you ‘can’ swap. You’re not intended to go back and forth.
They can, to a limit. Items which the MG character found, not bought can be equipped by the CoF character. And items the CoF character found that were not influenced by the CoF bonuses can be equipped by the MG character. These limitations are to prevent you from taking advantage of both factions at the same time one one character, making this the necessary way to play.
I’m not sure what you mean here. They aren’t detrimental to each other. I understand there’s more stash organization required if that’s what you’re referring to as a detriment? Of course favour is lost from all characters of that faction when you change a character away from it, which is necessary for changing factions to happen - and again isn’t something you’re intended to do except as a failsafe.
1.) if you were allowed to keep equipped gear from the other faction when changing, this would demand that you max both factions to get the best of both worlds and keep changing back and forth to optimize gameplay, and would also require a lot of third party guides on what the strategies are regarding it.
2.) If you were allowed to swap very freely, but not keep equipped gear, this would result in needing to be specific factions for specific parts of leveling, again utilizing third party guides for strategies on this.
The idea for the factions is that you chose the faction for you - and you stick with it. Item Factions should not be related to a build, they should be completely based on your preferred method of item acquisition. Trying different builds shouldn’t be related here.
The cost is low enough, particularly early on, that you can try both at minimal cost. For when you have multiple characters, you should already know what each offers. If it’s your second character, and you try the “other” faction, and end up swapping away from it because you don’t like it - then that faction’s favour getting reset doesn’t really matter as you aren’t intending to use it.
It results in what’s called a “burden of optimal play”. This is a scenario we try to remain very vigilant about in which if there’s a method of play which offers significant bonuses over standard, even if it’s unfun, players will feel the need to do it.
eg. if we introduced weapon swapping, there would be a necessary tactic to have a Last Laugh in your swap to cull bosses (or some similar meta) defeating the true purpose of the mechanic. Respeccing on the fly would create a burden of optimal play in changing skills before bosses to go from AoE to single target, or to swap specific resistances for different content. Not fun mechanics, but because they would be the optimal strategy, people would feel the need to do it.
It’s the same thing with swapping factions - having both maxed to get the best of both worlds would be such a significant advantage that players would feel demanded to max both, and keep swapping between them instead of picking the one that matches their playstyle.
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