I don't think they need to freeze the state of the game to ease up the time commitment a little. Some simple changes would help a little, and maybe some of these only kick in when you reach top level.
1) Remove the timers from challenges, I don't come back for the challenges, am sure most don't, they just get done as we do other stuff, let us just sim them all.
2) Also, remove sims as an item, just make simming a thing :-) They're pointless at this point, either people have tons of them, or people are running out because they're farming low energy nodes, but energy is already the gate, sims are not.
3) Maybe allow 'end game' folks to at least skip the first six nodes of GW, roll the prizes into node 7 for them.
4) Allow us to SIM other things we've already three starred unless you're making a difficulty change, I have already 3 starred the Ewok battle, is it relevent for me to have to do all 8 rounds every time it comes back? I am not gonna buy anything new based on it, same goes for the heists, omega battles, etc!
BTW I know we can just auto, but that's not the same thing. An even better alternative is that if you've completed these events more than say 10 times, just deliver the event content to my inbox and save me even more time! :-)