Most of the players who started playing 0ad during COVID, stopped doing so before a24 got released. There wasn't an immediate decrease with the release of a24, however during a24 the number of players playing online continuously decreased, until it reached a point where it was roughly equal to the number of players before COVID. I'm not sure if we can attribute the loss of players during a24 entirely to a24 or to what percentage it was just due to lifted COVID restrictions or people naturally loosing interest for a game they played for a while.
That said, I personally stopped playing 0 A.D. after a24 got released as it felt just dull and boring compared to earlier versions.
Even if we would want to, it'd probably be a bad idea, as only players with the same version of 0ad can play together and the constant need to update 0ad would annoy a significant portion of the player base. Many players aren't as invested into 0ad and aren't as tech savy that they'd want to update 0ad once a week.
In my opinion the perfect release cycle is somewhere between once a week and once every two years, however the number of players playing a26 online had been pretty stable over the course of its life time.
For such issues, players can use mods. If mods are limited to a small number of changes/fixes it also becomes easier to get them onto mod.io and to convince other players to install them.