My wildest quess here would be, that Landskechte actually have different weapons available. Because actually, they were armed and adept with different weapons and used them according to the job. So it might be possible to see them switch weapons - which would be entirely correct.
If I remember correctly you couldn’t become even Landsknecht, if you didn’t have a pike. I guess more accurate name should be in this case Dopplesoldats like they are called in AoE3. They could use Landsknecht has imperial age pikeman name.
You could become a Landsknecht regardless of weapon. Whoever hires the Landsknecht was basically hiring them because they were getting the job done. They were known for being very competent with various weapon types.
Now if you actually brought good equipment to the party, you would get a higher (double/doppel) payment/Sold (Doppelsoldner)
So Landsknechte didn’t bring equipment to the job in every case, except for their outfit, which in essence was just fashion to express individualism.
It seems that you are kind of right, but according the book I have they pretty much brought their equipment themselves. Minimum weapon requirement was 5-6m long pike which was cheapest, the main reason why pike was so popular. If you had more money you could bring sword, halberd, armor or arqebus.
Same issue here with a lot of other things: The swords look childish and out of place. Animations and unit-models need rework. I will constantly feel like a fool playing this game, moving clowns around if it is not addressed.
I COMMAND AN ARMY OF CLOWNS. Instead of big shoes and big noses they have big swords and bows. I have become the lord of clowns (and heat seeking arrows).
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you missed the point completely…
we have a lot of game experts here who have clearly worked on thousands of games going by their surety on what is or isnt right, but the point was, these guys keep wanting things to go in opposite directions…
the very reason it is so hard to see who shot your unit, is because people were whining that the arrows were too big, not realising even in aoe2, the arrows are too big, SO THAT WE CAN SEE THEM… and the same applies to almost all the over sized weapons, it is for readability, but instead we have this horde who only seem to play the game zoomed in, heck i wonder if they are even going to play the game much anyway…
When they get the critique of arrows “looking like crap because they’re [insert reason]” then they shouldn’t just change it to whatever that person is spurting out, but instead rethink the design and if they want to make changes, know the implications. That is their job.
We are just analysing it from the outside and our suggestions should never go into the game 1:1 or it would lead to all kinds of follow-up problems.
That said, I have very little love for the devs when it comes to that particular “arrow-issue”: It is so obvious that this is an ugly placeholder that they just couldn’t be bothered to remove/fix before capturing the footage for the public.
Spawning an arrow model and sending the thing up in the air above a tower, just to then turn towards and home into a target to awkardly stick there for a second. Heck, I could set that up in 10 min in unreal engine without touching a line of code.
Allowing that kind of thing to be in official marketing footage shows how low of a bar they set themselves for the visual quality they present to us.
Okay, then scale the weapons up for readibility. Nothing wrong with that. But they failed at it and did it in an inconsistent way that looks off. The one handed arming sword of a man at arms looks similar in size to the Landsknechts Zweihänder (!).
No matter the zoom distance: You look at it, it is dumb, please fix. How is that not valid critique?
There are also other, less lazy possibilities to make them more recognizable: Nicer animations for example (currently the guy handles the sword as if it is a baseball bat). Or a more recognizable sword design (a more bend upwards crossguard, maybe even that iconic (and rare) flame-like blade shape). AOE3 has a much better design in that regard, which again, makes it more recognizable on the battlefield and much easier to read the damage potential of its area attack.