You can definitely tell stroke direction from a ballpoint pen, especially for short strokes and hooks, that often end with a very soft part. But in any case, s

You can definitely tell stroke direction from a ballpoint pen, especially for short strokes and hooks, that often end with a very soft part. But in any case, stroke order is very easy to learn. You’ll pick up a few basic principles like top first then bottom, left first the right, plus the stroke order for common parts like boxes, without effort. That takes you 90% of the way, remembering the few exceptions is easy too. For me as a learner I never saw it as a burden at all.