A few things (from someone who has played factions for almost 6 years exclusively)
Resets are a part of the natural process. Yes it is aggravating when you lose all of your bought keys, enchant/mcmmo levels, and spawners. I myself have bought many small purchases for enchant tokens, but I had my time with them during this map and even earned enough money to buy some more IRLs myself from winning duels with my enchanted gear! (It was almost like an investment...)
As for the economy, as soon as the reset happens (which is only a matter of time), people like Royhal (100 mil+), Avokaii (130 mil) and many others will climb back to the top. This should not be a reason for the reset though, there are many other legit reasons to reset like
1. A new map (which could come with a new spawn, bosses, and more)
2. Perhaps implementing some of the new minecraft items? (new arrows, blocks, etc.)
3. An opportunity to update some of the factions plugins and bugs
4. Something new (a casino, coinflip, new items in crates, etc.)
Some of these could of course just be an update to the current factions map and server, but it also makes sense that a big update would come with a reset; historically speaking, this has been the case more so than not.
Finally, if there were to be a reset, payouts to the /f top would seem fair and a logical source of motivation. This idea of hard work rolling over to a new reset is already going to happen for people who make the FREE status on prison- this should apply to factions too. I think the payouts should be to more than just the top 3, maybe the top 10 (1st place $100, 2nd $75, 3rd, $50, 4-6 $25, 7-10 $15?).Of course, the higher places would get more money, but something as little as a $15 bonus would get more people into the /f top process (and would help jump-start the new factions map as most of this money would probably be spent on keys). Even if first place only gets something like $25 and #10 gets $5, this would be great for the community.
~EDIT~
Finally, after talking to a few people in-game, it seems that there is a sense of hesitation (myself included a little) of buying one-time use items like gapples, enchant tokens, and mcmmo stats from the store for fear of having them deleted soon on this map. I feel like a reset would have these people finally buy their items since they would officially know that their purchases would last for at least a year (if not more) after the reset happens.
Just my two cents.
Dream