i think the big issue with badlands not being played is that the badlands enjoyers are pretty much gerrymandered across different teams such that perhaps one team has 2 badlands enjoyers at the most - resulting in at least 8/12 players in any server being indifferent/against playing badlands - as opposed to maybe 1 player on every team hating process, hating gullywash, hating snakewater, etc, resulting in these players just having to suck it up.
basically even if 10-20% of people want to/would be fine with playing badlands, when 80+% say "bad map" or "ehhh i dont know how to play it yet" then it just ends up not being played.
edit: i exclusively say "badlands" but i guess it can be extended to granary since it also has a very low amount of playtime this season.