Kits are a extra bonus but not a core element of any faction server. sure special perks bring people in the door but they will only stay if there is a quality experience to be had. Sadly the current factions doesn't have this.
Now as a player, a moderator, a faction admin and a person who co-build, created and managed a faction server i can tell you the key to having a successful factions server is not perks but rather goals to obtain.... end game content.
Diamonds, enchanting, the nether, a fully sustainable base that keeps your faction healthy are things that need to be hard long term goals to obtain. not an hours work mining out a base and an hour gathering diamonds. On that note diamonds should not be easily had. But nukediamond let players see a diamond and took it away, this made players feel like they lost something. If they were 85% world edited into iron then the players wouldn't feel like they are losing everything when they went mining but rather gaining. The end result is the same but the illusion for success is much higher. (this is an huge issue with the last factions)
Now on to the stupid shit that is on factions. Ender chest allow players to never lose their best stuff and simply hide their best shit away in times of need. This is unacceptable and takes away the best part about raiding.... which is getting the good loot, not iron and wheat. ender chests should not be allowed and should be removed period.
Pvp logging must be 100% full proof, not 99% but 100%. There are enough plugin devs in this community to make that happen correctly. to chase someone down and they just log off with their gear ruins the entire experience of pvp in factions.
Mcmmo is another stupid.. stupid idea for factions, The idea that you can gather a forest off wood in minutes, get 4 diamonds from 1 ore and mine sand faster then you can walk. But it gets better you can do 10 damage per hit with an axe and disarm people with your fists??? Clearly these are broken and weren't apart of C.U for a reason. This should be removed or a cap set at a very low number.....
Now, how can factions be set up properly??? Simple. Make it hard to get maxed out on gear and make a good base, make goals that can be set and achieved hourly, daily, monthly. If you can get set up in a day, you go crush noobs, crushing noobs makes them rage quit and lowers population, then you get bored and leave... so don't do that. Once the fundamentals are set up and the ground work laid you can work on setting up a faction server that stands out among all the other ones. This is where you can add special plugins that bring in population and start adding colour to you're work. If you want things like mcmmo, chest shops, iconomy, kits and that type of thing you must look at what they do to balance of the game. New players must be able to the thrive and have fun even when players have been playing for months.
Step back, read this information and evaluate how important kits really are to the game.