They went with them and then they decided to take off and took them with them, so we met up with some friends and then got together with them even though they didn't join because they ultimately wanted to go home.

It's less precise. That's just a problem with English though. That said, just using people's names more often isn't that big of a deal and using gender neutral pronouns otherwise is, similarly, not hard and not a big deal. Nevertheless, I was referring to seven different distinct individuals in the above.

He went with her, but then she decided to take off and took him with her, so we met up with some friends and then got together with him though she didn't want to join because he ultimately wanted to go home.

It's still confusing, and the sentence is absurd, but you can get a better sense of how many people are involved with gendered pronouns. But no one talks that way, contextual clues would make it more obvious, and we'd use proper names in many of those instances by habit for clarification. That said, it would be easier if we just used a number-word in place of a pronoun. Thone, thwo, theree, thour, etc or something. Then we could refer to whom we mean with a numbered-pronoun to indicate agents. That would be the clearest way to differentiate agents in a sentence.

And to be very clear, I have no problem using non-gendered pronouns, but the idea that it isn't slightly less precise is facile. But, again, only slightly. And who cares if it makes people more comfort and seen?