Still not sure where this belief that they de-emphasized Factions came from.
I've had level 3 characters when i asked them what faction are you, the player said "Uhhh.. whats a faction?"
If you're not playing the right scenarios with the right character it can seem like the factions are pretty irrelevant.
Exactly, when your Faction is a key player then there is LOTS of emphasis, but the majority of the missions you will just play with no thought to faction.
There are no faction missions to give you an insight as to why this might be important to your faction.
I dont know what the solution is to be honest, faction missions were big time drains, but the flavour they added was great. My only suggestion would be maybe including the faction mission briefings going forward but only to flavour the scenario.
For instance:
Scenario Goal: The venture captain wants you to escort person X to Y.
Old Faction Handout: Do the above and while doing it steal a letter from person X before they reach Y.
Suggested New Faction Handout: Dear Pathfinder, as you are no doubt aware by now you have been tasked with getting X to Y. This is important not just to the society as a whole but also to our plans to (insert faction goal here) as person X has important connections. etc etc
This retains the flavour, gives your factions an overall presence, and yet is only a "wasted" minute for players to read, as opposed to the old missions where they read it then could waste minutes at each location trying to trigger their faction missions.
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A bit off topic, just a point of interest. I also just realized, Im running Before the Dawn as a PbP, which has a special mechanic involving not being detected and accumulating points. Two of the old faction missions tie in directly into at least two cases, one allowing the party to reduce their chance of being detected and the other making it more likely if they fail.