Faction Warfare and SiSi

So, the new iterations on faction warfare have been announced. CCP Ytterbium has posted twice today on the changes, one long post focusing on complexes and NPCs and another focusing on miscellaneous-yet-important changes.

I've noticed a couple of comments from people stating that CCP had better run these changes on SiSi for a good long period of time.

The question is, exactly what is SiSi going to tell CCP? All SiSi is going to do is tell CCP if the mechanics are working and if there are any bugs that need fixing. SiSi is not good platform for predicting player behaviour.

CCP could have had the Inferno faction warfare changes on SiSi for a year, and the problems that were eventually revealed, would have only been revealed in the live environment. Nobody plays on SiSi in the same way that they do on Tranquility. There are no hordes of LP farmers on SiSi. Nobody cares about ISK on SiSi. Players are goal-oriented on Tranquility. On SiSi, players are mostly just screwing around, looking for bugs, experimenting with mechanics and ship fittings, checking out the new art and user interface updates. Two totally different types of gameplay, with little to no crossover between them.

SiSi can tell you if a mechanic works, but SiSi cannot tell you much about player behaviour.

These new iterations, have them up for a couple months on Sisi, check out that the mechanics are sound. But it will not be until those changes hit Tranquility that we learn whether or not they hit the goals that they were designed to promote.