Perhaps the biggest reason people think XVM is toxic for the game is that not uncommonly, during the countdown, you'll see somebody on your team type in chat:
- "Ugh, another loss"
- "Loser team!"
- "Too many noobs!"
...and this is before the battle has even started. In most cases those folks are running XVM and they've seen that according to XVM the other team is loaded with green, blue, maybe even purple players, and their own team is full of orange, and maybe even red players.
So they assume that they have no chance to win and they're anxious to grumble about it publicly. That is pretty toxic. But guess what...
...they're wrong.
What happened tonight?
I just got out of a battle on Serene Coast in my VK 30.02 D (a Tier 7 German MT). It was an 3/5/7 Tier 8 battle, so there were 3 tier 8s on each team, 5 tier 7s, and 7 tier 6s.
According to XVM all three of the enemy tier 8s (A Progetto, a VTU, and a Lorraine 40T) were green players. None of our players were greens, I'm a yellow, and most of our team were oranges or reds.
A toxic player would have looked at that, groaned, and typed something negative in the chat. I'll admit that looking at that I figured it would be a tough game. Those are good players, in good tanks. And the level of support I was likely to get from my team was...uncertain. But did I write off the battle? No. I decided I'd just play my best and see what happened; even if the odds were against us.
So I started out of South spawn towards C1, which is my usual play in a MT. This was also a 3 arty battle, which I'm painfully aware of at C1 because arties will target that brawl.
Driving towards C1 it was pretty much just me and one of our Type 59s who was, statistically...not a very good player. We had a Super Hellcat hanging back who might snipe, and not a lot else. And as expected before we could get into position the Lorraine 40T crested the C1 hill in front of us.
I was expecting it so I already had my gun pointed that way and was lucky to snap a shot into him for 204 (a low roll) before he could pull back. Over the next minute or so, the Type 59 and I, joined shortly by another Type 59 (also, statistically, not a great player), and supported by our arty made amazingly short work of the Lorraine, the TVP, and a VK 45.03 who had come to that corner as well. We also knocked the Progetto down to about half health before he fled.
I was pleasantly surprised. We lost one of the Type 59s, but at this point our team was up 6-2 and two of their green Tier 8s were already dead having done not much between them.
Our other flank did fine as well, and soon we were up 9-2 and pushing on their base. I managed to kill one arty and wound another. I flanked the T25/2 (and got the kill) and knocked the Progetto down to a 1 shot. The Progetto managed to kill me, just moments before my team finished him off. The entire battle was just under 4 minutes and we had a 15-5 win!
And what did we learn?
Don't get hung up on stats. I've had MANY battles where a team of cheerful oranges and lemons have beaten a bunch of limes and blueberries. What's a better predictor of a loss than stats? Bad attitudes. I'm more likely to predict the game to be a loss if the team is arguing and bitching at each other in chat, than based on the colors of the lineup.
So I typed "GLHF" in chat like I always do, and I set off to do my best. Those Type 59s with the bad stats? They held their angle and enabled me to put the enemies at C1 into a cross-fire. They each did decent damage and each got a kill. And, we got the win. They may not have been statistically good players, but they played well.
I know that XVM is sometimes used to focus top players. So are clan tags and all those little badges that Wargaming wants to add to your name in the lineup. If you're worried about that then you should use the new anonymizer feature. But the truly toxic part of XVM is the bad attitudes it engenders in players who give up before the game even starts because XVM has suggested the other team is better.
If you're one of those, stop it. This easy 15-5 win is all the proof I need that any team can beat any other team in any given battle; if they just play well and don't get negative.
GLHF!
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