Play has gotten worse and I think that's precisely because player guides are not incorporated into play.
i agree but only partially. as someone who used to be semi active on this site (life got busy and i came back just to check up tonight (shouts to ether!)) i will say that the vast vast vast majority (if not all) guides don't deal with political theory very well.
most guides will say things like 'people tend to think xyz when this happens' which may or may not be true but it misses the point of one of the greatest games ever created almost entirely. mafia is fantastic because it is dynamic. it gets its dynamism from interesting political context(s) of each and every game, which is more than just what people tend to think.
most/all guides are teaching about moves in terms of fork in the road propositions. you are going along a road; you may choose x or y (or z, etc) and here is how people will think about that and here are some more forks.
the guides dont teach about asserting your will onto other people, asserting your will in such a way that affects a desired result in an opponent or the group, how to read a political landscape, how to write a narrative that flows like water, how to establish a character and operate from underneath that character.
i find that reading other games and playing in them is invaluable and cannot be replaced but i have not yet seen a guide discussing strong language, or parsed out lines of argumentation that encourage trapping, and the advantages and pitfalls of this stuff in terms other than the general 'what people think' or 'what makes good scum/town/etc' or 'what moves you may make which stay consistent and smell good'