Prayers of this type please God because God is essentially the Savior, the One who delights to rescue sinners from the wages of their sin. There were other professed saviors in Ephesus at this time. [source][source][source]
"Alongside worship of Artemis, the Imperial cult was a dominant religious-political fixture in Ephesus at this time." [1][source]
There is nothing in this text or in any other that would limit the truly universal interpretation of "all men." God wants everyone to experience eternal salvation. People perish because they do not hear the gospel, or, hearing it, they choose to reject it. God has given people freedom to choose to accept or reject the gospel. When people reject the gospel, this causes God considerable pain. This is clear in the many references in Scripture to God sorrowing over the fate of those (believers and unbelievers) who choose to spurn Him. [2][source]
"It"s often said that the purpose of prayer is not to get man"s will done in heaven, but to get God"s will done on earth." [3][source]
"Even those who will not allow you to speak to them about God, cannot prevent you speaking to God about them. What mighty conquests have been won this way-Hudson, a young schoolboy, reading tracts in his father"s study one Sunday afternoon while his parents were away for the week-end; his mother constrained, where she was, to pray specially for her boy, who was called that very afternoon, miles away, to the Savior, and to become the great Hudson Taylor, of the China Inland Mission. Reuben, a dissolute young man who has left home, has one night got out of bed to commit suicide; his mother, miles away, has that very hour been constrained also to get out of bed, and to pray specially for her erring Song of Solomon , who, instead of suicide, was saved, subsequently to become the famous American evangelist, Dr. R. A. Torrey." [4][source]