To be clear, I believe the game became problematic after gkrieg made it clear how to end the game, and a player decided not to. Until that point, you could make an argument that one can’t trust anyone else. But once scum claims scum in order to endgame, that’s basically gold.
At that point, a player has to make a decision to win with gkrieg or not. And that’s an unfortunate political/personal decision that hurts the game. Mafia members don’t get to choose their partners for a reason. Players don’t get to choose their alignment for a reason.
The survivor role was always about living until the end of the game. To do that, you wanted the game to end as soon as possible. To do otherwise goes against the original win condition and playing “as town” is basically like an alignment-switch, and I think harms the balance of a closed, invented setup.
The way the game was designed, town was endgamed once we were down to ten players alive. From that point on, mafia wasn’t playing against town, it was playing against one player.