Sorry for the dramatic subject but this is true, for me. but the pencil tool is my most used tool for my work.
I've used it for many many years and its the basis of everything I do in Illustrator which i use 99% of my work. (i havent even touched the pen tool for many years)
When I saw it was updated I was happy it finally got some attention and decided to give it a try.
Now I'm devastated to see the direction it's taken
I've used the pencil tool on the lowest fidelity 0.5px smoothness 0% setting for many many years.
So that when I draw the result I want is almost exactly what my hand draws and not a smoothed/math generated path.
In the new pencil tool settings the lowest "accurate" preset its still very smooth and controling and gives an output that is not at all something i can use.
Actually I cant draw anything in the style desired with it. Its like it has its own life and decides the outcome of what i draw. This is because of the few anchor points and smoothness.
Not all artists wants their drawings to have that smoothed perfect rounded edge with few anchor points.
Im sure many will like it and its good its there for them but this cripples illustrator to a forced style not everybody wants.
Why lock down the pencil tool to such few and controling presets???
The "accurate" needs to be more sensitive to the hand movement or bring back the old settings.
For example the lowest setting in earlier version was fidelity 0.5px smoothing 0%.
This is more accurate to what you actually draw. Why cant this also exist?!?!
For example when im trying to draw the silhouette of an eye or head shape as accurate as I can, when im done drawing and release my wacom pen cursor i get an roundish smooth blob now that doesnt look and feel as i want. Starting to adjust this shape with other tools is very time consuming and doesnt even then produce my desired result and above all doesnt feel like drawing. Feels like im plotting stuff around.
I need to be able to set the presets to finer detail so that i get many anchor points like before which give the possibility to draw in detail and make "turns" with the pencil that make corners, rugged edges etc.
I know I can continue to use my cs4 version but some day that could be too old for the modern technology coming and it feels now that for me illustrator has been given a death sentence, in my case.
Sorry again for being so dramatic and long in my writing but its really a disaster for illustrators who want to draw in illustrator and have it as accurate as possible to the hand.
Finding another way of drawing my illustrations is pretty nuts after all these years invested with illustrator.
Please Adobe can you fix this? save the pencil tool in this regard.
I dont know how but Im willing to help in any way I can as this is very important to me.
PS the removal of the handy smooth tool shortcut is also a very cumbersome remake. There is already and open discussion about this http://forums.adobe.com/message/6032965#6032965
(This is for the illustrator 17.1 update. I use 15" macbook pro retina computer with wacom cintiq 13hd drawing tablet)