Agree, avoid large merges at all costs. the longer a feature branch exists the more needless cost it incurs when trying to re-integrate it with the merge.
Absolutely. Though you can mitigate that by merging develop into the feature branch often. It makes the merge back pretty painless.
Of course if you've got two long-living, contradictory feature branches, merging develop is not going to be enough. I guess you still need some communication in the team. But it's also important to keep your branches as short as you can. If you got a really big feature, try splitting it up.
