Revealing mistake: When Strahm's phone says "no signal" there is actually a three bar signal. (00:06:35)
Revealing mistake: When Strahm removes his jacket at the end of the movie and starts pushing the walls with his hands and uses his legs, when he takes his feet off the wall, the wall moves. Now considering these walls are supposed to be solid steel, this doesn't make sense. The walls are actually wood.
Revealing mistake: When Strahm is being crushed by the "closing walls" at the end, watch closely during the last few seconds. There is a brief shot from above Strahm, looking down as he screams and the camera is spinning. If you watch closely, you can tell the "closing walls" that are crushing him aren't moving during this shot.
Revealing mistake: When Stahm is in the cube trap, there is one shot just before he sees his phone, gun, etc. and you can see a massive gap down the side of the cube where it wasn't shut properly. With the size of the hole, it would be extremely hard to keep water in the cube. (00:09:35)
Answer: The games of Jigsaw and his followers were always intended to be extremely difficult, but with a small chance for survival based on the actions of the player. Hoffman probably wouldn't have cared either day if anyone else survived, but likely anticipated that most of the others would die. (Strahm's line about everyone being supposed to die with Hoffman being the soul survivor was more conjecture than anything.) In terms of killing Jeff- both Jeff and Strahm were emotional hot-heads, so in all likelihood one or both was going to die if they encountered each other. Strahm's water cube was intended to be an execution tool for breaking the rules. That's why Hoffman seemed so shocked that he miraculously survived.