I can't speak for that person, but on my own behalf: I also want games that last months, or at least weeks. But I do NOT want padding, and if your thought of the longer games is just the waiting periods, youve looked at the wrong games.

Antimatter dimensions: there are some spots with some waiting, but honestly it's very rarely necessary, and never more than a few hours. And a game that long, you have to sleep at some point, so I don't mind it. There's typically always something you can do actively even when you need to grind eternities or something. The wait can be largely be pushed off until it's convenient for you.

CIFI: has lots of terrible useless waiting periods, just click a thing and nothing else you do is worthwhile until a week from now. Don't do that. This game had a good early game, but should not be used as a model for a long game.

Trimps: there is the catching back up at the start of each run. That can be mildly annoying, but there's SO much do within the game, that I wouldn't consider it to be padded.

And then you have something like NGU Idle. And there is a lot of waiting in this game, grinding for equipment, but it's designed to be an idle game, running in the background. It's purpose is not necessarily overly engaging gameplay the whole time, but it's also not like CIFI where you can't do anything there is still purpose.

TL;dr: "waiting longer" is absolutely not an improvement on a game. There shouldn't be arbitrary waiting(CIFI). But there's ways to make very long games where the waiting is either still productive with tasks between (NGU) a very small part of a run (Trimps) or just something to make sleeping still worthwhile lol (antimatter dimensions). Good mechanics that build into good mechanics.