Yep. It's about all you can do. And time will eventually cure this.
Still, I have to mention that back about four years ago when this was all starting out, I noticed that compared to people in North America, European posters at various forums were on average far more set on the idea that they would resist the change, that they would stock up on celluloid balls, or that celluloid balls would never go away. I suggested to some posters fairly early on that Nittaku Premiums and seamless balls were quite decent but that viewpoint was definitely not popular with that contingent. The thing is that this attitude has really come back to bite them in the ass, exactly as I tried to explain in 2014 (when it was clear to me that we had at least some types of playable 40+ balls, acknowledging up front that the cellulose acetate ones were unplayable).
Maybe my city is just different, but by the end of 2014 everyone here was using Nittaku Premium or XSF. It is still true that the variability of 40+ balls is greater than the celluloid era (both of those balls are ok but are quite different from each other). But even that variability would go away if we all accept the ABS standard.
The one thing that is absolutely certain is that our sport will never go back to 40 mm celluloid.
I can nothing but agree with you.
But to be fair, the situation is a bit more complicated.
The people were thinking so, 'cause the DTTB told 'em so. As i wrote, one official said cellballs will never be forbidden for amateurs and will be around forever. Now everyone with a little farsight could see through those lies. But most players believed so.
The top leagues were forced to use the p-ball whereas the lower leagues could decide if they wanted to change to the p-ball or not.
Now if one looks a little closer then you will find that in the top leagues there are mostly young, aspiring and upcoming players from semi pro to pro level and some ex-pros.
Players with the skillset to adapt pretty quick, but these are not the majority of players.
The majority of players play in the lower local leagues with many rather conservative oldtimers. In my team I have one dude over 70 and another one will turn 80 this year.
Now age doesn't necessarily mean stubborness, but many playing for 40 years and more and have all went through the more or less arbitrarily looking changes the ITTF came up with.
From different rubber colour rule,
to red+black rubber rule,
to hidden serve,
to change of counting,
to bigger balls,
to ban of speedglue,
to ban of FRICTIONLESS pips,
to new ballmaterial and again bigger balls.
And to be honest, most of these (more or less) necessary changes weren't very popular, especially not with the older people.
I think i wrote it a while ago in a different thread, but Germany alone has lost a large number of players. From nearly a million registered club members in 1991 to something like 550k in 2016.
Someone on the forum tt-news.de estimated that alone in 2016 almost 30000 club members less.
I don't know where he has got that number from, but it doesn't seem to be too farfetched.
Here's a link to the discussion.
http://forum.tt-news.de/showthread.php?t=277814
The point is that someone who has been playing fairly high (3rd Bundesliga, Oberliga etc.) and only plays nowadays for the fun of it will quit if he doesn't have fun anymore.
So since the ITTF has decided to kill a IMO very important aspect of the game (for those that don't know, I'm talking about SPIN) there might be some more people losing their fun.
(After having changed from 38 to 40 they had to adjust their timing, and now their timing is off again, 'cause these new balls behave like sh!t. Someone wrote almost as if a frog is inside the ball)
And what happens to a hobby that doesn't give you joy and fun anymore (or rather not the amount of fun you used to have)?
Exactly, you quit...
So with all this in mind i would assume that the DTTB didn't want to scare off the old folks (which form the basis) plus the sellers probably wanted to get rid of their stock without too much loss.
But you're totally right. The situation is what it is... not satisfying for the players.
