It’s not, not really.
90% of my games chat is completely silent. (The other 10% I wish it had been.) That’s not the way a team game works.
We can absolutely bring friends in from a place where we got organized and social elsewhere (like Discord) to play War Thunder with us. But that doesn’t make the game itself a team activity. We’re all just using each other as slightly less predictable and slightly more challenging AI, for the most part.
You said “team sport” first, and War Thunder Random Battles are not set like a “team sport”. “Team sport” like would be squadron battles or some tournaments were you make your own team with other players that want to play together competitively and share the same goal.
In Random Battles, teams are made up of random players with different BRs, vehicles, objectives. You want to win? I couldn’t care less cause I’m playing for fun or for grinding vehicles which is the main objective for most players in this game.
Also, matches in Random Battles are usually decided by only a few of the top players in each team, most others are just “food” for them.
Win rate is also a stat and there are also win rate stat padders, they usually play in squads of 4 and don’t care how many deaths they get as long as they can drop their bombs on target and repeat. That’s why we had less than 3 min matches in the past. In Ground Battles there are players that you only see playing in squads of 4, just to keep their win rate stats high, and if they are good enough they can do it cause most of the time the matchmaker will place them against squads of casual players that are only trying to play together with their friends.
Nothing is “exploitable” when it is working as intended - because what you do is exactly as intended!
For me “worse” means it is harder to achieve the stated goal - ie something mumbly about being able to “train a higher BR plane”…
“team GAME” and “team SPORT” have slightly different connotations