So do good players also dislike citizens? I for one think they're quite important and add a good dynamic but noobs always ruin it with their complaining. Let me explain why.
For one the mafia can easily claim to be citizen and then actual citizens have to defend their role pretty hard especially when the town cannot afford a no-lynch. This makes citizens active and the town needs to think about who helped the town the most, what judgments did the people who claim citizen made during the game, etc.
Another important role of the citizen that non-noobs should know is their option to claim being an important role and hopefully make it believable so that mafia shoots them at night instead of randomly shooting an actual power role.
Citizens add lying and uncertainty to the game which is really fun of the game.
All in all, although citizens do not influence the game by doing things at night (for some reason people think that's the fun part of the game :), they can influence the game a lot with their talking and that's their role. Try it yourself, you'll see how it feels to defend your citizen status because people think you're scummy and a maf claimed citizen. It's a rush.
Now I've tried alternatives to citizens; Masons at first, it looked more fun and interesting but there really shouldn't be more than 2 depending on the setup otherwise if town is good they can require a role call and since the 3 masons know eachother it becomes pretty easy to pin point the mafia. With 2 masons it kind of avoids that problem.
Another alternative is putting random towns instead of citizens... which also allows lying and uncertainty but can make the game unbalanced... but I've been putting randoms more often now since people leave when they see citizen and mess it all up.
Anyway, what do you guys think about citizens? I played epicmafia before and there were almost always villagers and the games were even longer in that game. In the SC2 version the games are shorter and people still don't want citizens even if they won't even be a citizen for a long time really and they get EXTRA points for being one.