Been playing casually this run to test out these new timers, the wof time gate really isn’t noticeable since on avg wof always dies at around that time anyways, we just beat mechs not too long ago but the lack of content post mechs is little due to plant being time gated.
Due to this, most key players that helped kill mechs the first time are not around since the lack of stuff to do post mech, so the players that missed the mech fights can’t kill these bosses core to progression since the players that keep up with the run seeing that we need to wait 26-24hrs at the time mechs got killed, simply got bored and will just wait and do something else after getting the quick upgrades like avenger emblems, chlorophyte etc.
My pitch to this would be to reduce the timer of plantera to 3 or 3.50 days, but increase its Strength to the point where it’s difficult enough to fail, (but give hope that its possible, kinda how wof is just to hard that it was very rarely killed before 2days into a run) it even if cheesing it at the surface since that’s the main issue with plant being killed too early, or make that strategy illegal to do, as how people abusing iframes, ect. ( or simply make it fire a range attack when enraged with that system you teased a while ago, maybe replacing the little flowers it shoots since it does fire a projectile in phase 2 enraged but it’s very negligible due to being able to be broken when hit.)
Which if players really want to kill plantera before it hits 1x strength, the avg dps has to go up, which would require refighting the mechs more, promoting people to catch up since mechs not being done results in less players access to chlorophyte and its upgrades later, which makes their survivability higher giving allowing them to farm items more.
All the other timers are perfectly fine since post plant just grants so much to do that usually requires more than a day for all active players to get their items from farming events, killing eol, and doing solar eclipse.
Also, a side thing, players complain on the wof being too fast upon spawning (i personally find it hilarious and fun) maybe tuning it down a small bit. Since it gets difficult when their is less than 10-15 players on the server, which usually like 30% help.
TL;DR: Nerf plant timer but buff its stats to give a false sense of hope so people grind more bosses or items, slow down the wof a tiny bit, everything else is completely understandable changes.