Well, what would your strategy be to win as a traitor as per the suggested changes?
As I see it, afk players are already generally overlooked for both lynches and kills, therefore the dominant strategy for this role to "not lose" (as opposed to "win") will usually be defensive and evasive behaviour. In my view we already have cases of (winning) mafias not claiming (not just till the end but at all), afks avoiding lynches for most of the game, and non-contributing town players. Just the last handful of games provide examples of this.
Imo, the current traitor has to actively undertake action to win, like other non-towns, whereas the suggested changes take away that agency from the player. It's not even like freeman in whose best interest it is to kill mafia; this kind of traitor wouldn't want that either. They don't have to verify. They don't have to do anything to win because there's no direction their role suggests to take to win. As I see it their wincon is not doing anything damnable, which probably translates to contributing as little as possible to remain unseen by both sides. This takes skill in a hypothetical environment where 20 posts min. is the daily norm, not so much in our games with a modest 3 posts req.
Another point of note is that this traitor fears their own team. They can not resolutely take any side. Perhaps a freeman in the open draws sympathies from town doc. New Traitor has no allies, but unlike TP cannot do anything to win either. Even if the role is interesting on paper, it is probably not a lot of fun for the player to be as wishy-washy as possible by default.
Ofc I'm not saying every player will play it like this, but (town) roles tend to gravitate towards a dominant strategy. Protective roles cover claimers, Det (generally) holds out till they find contradictory results, Traitor attempts to verify their list by killing someone on it, to decide what side they are on, etc. New traitor wants for nothing but for the game to be over already since they're just a plot device for mafia to win, not someone who can do anything on their own.
As I see it, traitor is difficult to play because they have to jump through lots of hoops to win. They need to be recruited, so they need to be killed. Therefore their aggro on mafia needs to be just effective enough to bait a kill but not so effective it could gain momentum for town. It's a net positive for mafia too if they kill the current traitor; it is a +2 for them, maybe a little more in esoteric terms if the traitor is a trusted townie. New traitor doesn't want to be killed, mafia does not want to kill them (though doing so is a -2 punishment for them). If their ally protects mafia for long enough they get lynched anyway (so they won't do that too much either). Therefore, I think the suggested traitor will try to do as little as possible.
Winning as this traitor means you fence-sat long enough the whole game not to be discovered by either party, which, in the current climate, isn't so much an acknowledgement of that traitor's skill as much as it is an indictment against all of town for not killing deadweight. If you want to buff traitor, I think like with TSC just tell the mafia, "hey there's a traitor around, you might want to look out for that +2". I don't think it's necessary but I don't think we should want to make this role less skill-intensive or engaging. It's one of the few roles that requires the player to really participate to win, that's valuable in and of itself.
