The thing is that people ARE interested in the game. It's just that 33 people is a lot to ask for a single game. Look at Slime Survival: smaller number of active players, but games are filled/played every single day because it only requires 4 players to play it. Letting a game that we spent dozens of dev hours on that still has an active playerbase is, with all due respect, the worst idea I've ever heard. Just fix the obvious problem that is the high player count and BZ is suddenly playable again. I wouldn't doubt that it gets more players after the max player count is reduced simply because people can actually play it again.Suggestion: Let Battlezone die. You tried it, and even gave it what, six updates? You're not going to annoy people into playing something; if people aren't interested after six updates, let it die because the people just aren't bothered about it. The fact you want to remind people the game exists says just how little people care about it.
If you have to downsize a game, making it essentially a Survival Game variant just to get people to play it, then the ship has already sailed and you shouldn't try to chase after it anymore.
Sometimes it's better not to shoot at all, because shooting requires energy. Why waste your energy on an obviously bad outcome?