I guess you are all complaining about a gateway which is just bad implementet. It should be reworked, not removed. If they remove the light party requirement there is no need of the workshop either, no reason left to put it in the workshop instead of putting it into the recipe list of specific crafters. The only reason for this gateway is that you can't do it as a single person. So they implemented it the easiest way in requireing a light party.

It should reworked in a way like crafters need to feed in the mats and processing the step as a single action and you can only feed in crafts you can craft with your actually equiped crafter. This would atomaticaly bring in the need of multiple players to participate but with a better reason than just to AFK in the workshop. Easier recipe less people needed, more difficult recipe more people needed.


Edit: But i guess you would complain about my suggestion as well.