While the amount of pencil movement may show you how much harder one pistol's firing pin/striker makes contact with the pencil than another pistol, it doesn't necessarily mean your pistol won't function.
I modified one of my steel framed P01 looking Compacts to be SAO. Took it apart, stoned some surfaces, put the CGW parts in it and it worked great. Nice trigger pull, pull the slide back, let the slide go forward, squeeze the trigger, nice break and the hammer fell. Wonderful.
Took it to the range, put up some targets, pulled the slide to the rear, inserted a magazine, let the slide go forward, got my stance, aligned the sights, squeezed the trigger -CLICK! A CLICK I could hear with the ear plugs in. Thumb cocked it, squeezed the trigger, CLICK! Ejected that round, looked at the primer - nothing. Tried it again, nothing. Unloaded it, put it in the bag and shot a different pistol that day.
I didn't do the pencil test prior to going to the range. Finally figured out the issue was the SAO trigger was making contact up in the frame on the front of the trigger (nope, not the adjustment screw at all) and that was keeping the trigger from moving forward enough to let the trigger bar move forward enough to get the firing pin block lifting arm to reset behind the back of the trigger bar. It was such a small amount it was hard to believe - but it was enough. Removed the trigger, took some metal off the top/front of it (up inside the frame where you couldn't even see it), reinstalled it, used the pencil test to confirm that now/finally, the firing pin block mechanism was properly resetting and the darn thing would go bang the next range trip.
The pencil test is not the only test to determine whether your pistol has an issue, just another tool in the tool box.
Oh, had an issue with an AR9 pistol a couple months ago. Bought new Wilson Combat firing pins for them as spares. Wilson Combat is good stuff. My nephew went ahead and installed his spare figuring it was higher quality/less likely to break than the PSA firing pin in his bolt. He went home for a visit, grabbed the AR9, the magazines and some boxes of ammo and targets and headed to the mountains.
Got out one morning, put his targets up and all he could get was click, click, click. Darned good thing all he needed it for was target shooting. Brought it home and we took a look at it. It would just barely make a pencil bump. Mine (same PSA upper/bolt) would bounce a pencil all the way out of the long barrel. Pulled the firing pins from both and noticed the PSA firing pin had a much longer tip on it than the Wilson Combat firing pin.
Did some more swapping around and found that the PSA bolts seem to be made different inside - the bolt face must be thicker as the firing pin from my PSA bolt would work in his or mine, the Wilson Combat firing pins wouldn't work in either but would work in my Faxon bolt in the AR9 carbine. I ordered a couple Taacom (think that was the name) firing pins and they work fine in the PSA bolts.
Guns. They're different. The more of them you work on, the more odd stuff you see/learn. The pencil test is just a tool to help diagnose a problem. Sure it quieter than putting alive round in the chamber and pulling the trigger to see if the firing pin will set off the chambered round.
For me the bottom line is - if one pistol doesn't bounce the firing pin as much as another the weak one may still fire fine. But if the pencil doesn't move or just jiggles from the movement of the hammer falling, then you might want to investigate further.