New Unreal is a an all around miserable experience.

[Packetdancer]

Oh yeah, I've heard NA doesn't use an agreed upon strat for a fight. I don't think I can do that here.

I wouldn’t say that NA PF doesn’t agree on a strat at all; I would say “at some point in the first week, some strat becomes favored, and then NA PF will cling to that strat tenaciously even if it’s demonstrably flawed and something better comes out week 2.”

(You do, of course, still have a few groups that want to run something a different way.)

But often there are little things no one entirely agrees on, or bothers to put in the PF description. Like soaking the first towers in P5S, the ones scattered semi-randomly around; I’ve seen “go to your clock spot and just take the nearest”, I’ve seen “healers and tanks take the first one clockwise of true north, DPS take first clockwise”, I’ve seen the same in reverse (TH CCW, DPS CW), I’ve seen partners assigned with “take north if there’s one there, otherwise West, otherwise East” and such, and I’ve seen “just YOLO and hope every tower gets soaked.” And that is where stuff can get a bit scuffed.

Then, of course, you have the “I’m always W, I need to be W or I’ll forget what to do!” type scuffles over clock spots…

[hagare]

Then, of course, you have the “I’m always W, I need to be W or I’ll forget what to do!” type scuffles over clock spots…

that's why a macro is useful. It shows you positions

[thegreatonemal]

that's why a macro is useful. It shows you positions

Useful for what? So the person complains that they can't be M1 because they only know how to do M2 when the only difference between those two is if you go to the southeast or southwest.

[Sunhwapark]

Useful for what? So the person complains that they can't be M1 because they only know how to do M2

There are cases where people aren't familiar enough with fights to be switching spots much which happens, in which case people can adapt around it where possible which is kinda the point of being able to designate these positions before fighting. Having stuff like 4 people deliberately running into "M1"'s position is impossible when you have a macro because everyone else will have a designated spot too, and if they wanna all just ignore eachother and say "Nah I'm going west idc" It's just creating pointless conflict and the boss doesn't even have to lift a finger to make your party disband.

The fights should be against the boss, not amongst yourselves in party chat.

[hagare]

Useful for what? So the person complains that they can't be M1 because they only know how to do M2 when the only difference between those two is if you go to the southeast or southwest.

because a macro shows position and they can use it to check.
then again, NA don't use macros do they.
so how would you know how useful they are.

Not all. We refer to some like Barb's cleaves as telegraphing with their animations. Not all refer to the aoe indicators on the ground.

well, Her P1 are mostly telegraphs xD
if you act to the marker, you're probably dead

[Reinha]

Useful for what? So the person complains that they can't be M1 because they only know how to do M2 when the only difference between those two is if you go to the southeast or southwest.

Whoever complains about not getting their favorite position can leave. They either reserve the M2 role first or they suck it up and do the other role. The party strat doesn't revolve around these princesses.

[Tlamila]

Useful for what? So the person complains that they can't be M1 because they only know how to do M2 when the only difference between those two is if you go to the southeast or southwest.

Never seen anybody do that. People use take whatever role. If they have super strong preferences, they nicely ask the favour to be a certain one, which is no problem to fix, but in general everybody just takes whatever and adjusts without further comments. People are way more flexible than you make them out to be,