nothing, there is no purpose to them at all.. you can have three characters and rep each faction to obtain weapons, the armour meh.. shouldn't factions actually have a function in the game, some type of real meaningful interaction. Ideas. pvp matches would choose only players from one faction for each team, the more that faction wins in a week, the more rep that faction would earn end of the week for those participants. perhaps something that really shows the differences between the ideology of each faction.. I would be willing to be that most people don't even realize the political differences between each faction.. yet another piece of the game that was ripped out and never put back in.