Having a designated quest specialist is the solution (without modding of course). You can still quest together and clear POIs as a group for that co-op feeling. Sure, it means that your intellect guy will have to craft bikes for everyone else but that will be fun for that person to do. My group were also disappointed with the change and went right to modding but we have been talking about it almost nonstop since the change and we've decided on our next restart we will play it as designed and choose someone to be the designated specialist. Now that our initial reaction has been alleviated by our mod and we've had time to think about it we are warming up to the idea.
However, it does work against what TFP is trying to accomplish in keeping the quest progression from going too quickly because if everyone in a group is focused on pushing one person's rep up through the tiers they will do that far faster than a single player would be able to do it. So the solution actually works crosswise to what TFP was hoping to accomplish.
Another possible design solution would be to allow all participants to get points like it was but limit the number of quests that can be taken per day. I've seen that limitation in almost every other RPG that offers jobs. Only this game allows for continual questing all day long with no end to the jobs. The benefit to this method of stretching out the quest progression is that it would force players to broaden the variety of their activities each day. If they finish their available jobs by noon then instead of just continuing to quest the rest of the day they might work on their base, track down mats for a crafting task they are tracking, clear some POIs without a quest, farm, mine, harvest, etc. Perhaps the limit should be on a rl timer of 60 minutes. That way people with 120 minute days wouldn't be penalized. They would have some morning jobs and some late afternoon jobs.