True, but I really think they provide a very good mix of pirates. Pretty much all of them are unique in their appearance.
Some can make for good civilians as well, in this setting but also in the medieval setting.
It's one thing that did bother me about lego: the pirates looked very similar. I always switched their parts around to create a varied bunch. And then I still tried to not put those with the same chest piece or same faces together to not make them look uniform.
Playmobil pirates where never very uniform, in the first batch the exact same crew of the ship also came in a loose set, which is a shame but the wonderfull thing about playmobil at the time was that any clicky could be a pirate, which allowed for creating a varied crew from the start.