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For this to make sense, we have to assume what I have noticed about the current k/d system: K/D does not reflect Kills per Death, but acts more as a ranking system for a player's effectiveness relating to kills. The K/D of the player that (kills you/you killed) also affects your k/d's change: The lower the K/D of the player you killed, the less your K/D increases and the less their K/D decreases. The higher the K/D of the player you killed, the more your K/D increases and the more their K/D decreases. The longer you've played (not necessarily xp, since that can reset), the harder for the k/d to change in either direction. When you first join, your k/d is at 1.000. As you play, it slowly approaches a number, which is a fairly accurate measure of your "effectiveness as far as kills" Now that we have that out of the way, we can assume that averaging the k/d's is a way to analyze overall skill, assuming each team has equal number of members. Since that can't happen with an odd number of players, we remove the dividing by number of players, and instead compare sums of each team's K/D. ================================================================================================================================================= I will try to explain this without being too mathematical in my explanation so that the concept will be easy to understand. (We will do a more realistic example later on, but for now, let's use a basic example to show the concept) Let's assume we have 10 players. For simplicity sake, we'll say each players has the respective k/d of {1.0, 2.0, 3.0 ...} As it works now, teams are arranged by alternating the skill onto each team: Team 1: 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 Team 2: 9, 7, 5, 3, 1 We can represent this as "ABAB..." arrangement. If we sum each team, we get: Team 1: 10+8+6+4+2 = 30 Team 2: 9 + 7 + 5 + 3 + 1= 25 Diff: 5 That's a pretty substantial difference. Let's average them since each team has 5 players: Team1: 30/5 = 6 Team 2: 25/5 = 5 Diff: 1 ====-=-=-==== The method by which I believe will work more effectively is using an ABBAABBA... arrangement. Team 1: 10, 7, 6, 3, 2 Team 2: 9, 8, 5, 4, 1 If we sum, we get: Team 1: 10+7+6+3+2 = 28 Team 2: 9+8+5+4+1 = 27 Diff: 1 We can average these, since there are an equal number of players per team: 28/5 = 5.6 27/5 = 5.4 Diff: 0.2 ABAB ABBA 5 > 1 1 > 0.2 Looks much closer to me. More realistic example: For this, I recorded the k/d's of players on Hardcore at the time of me writing this. 14 players: 3.826 3.613 3.002 2.641 2.454 1.881 1.697 1.480 1.280 1.185 1.125 1.113 0.587 0.390 With how current shuffling works (ABAB), the sums are: Team 1: 13.971 Ave: 2.00 Team 2: 12.303 Ave: 1.75 Diff: 1.668 Ave Diff: .25 With ABBA..., the sums are: Team 1: 13.381 Ave: 1.91 Team 2: 12.893 Ave: 1.84 Diff: 0.488 Ave Diff: 0.07 ABAB ABBA 1.668 > 0.488 .25 > 0.07 Yet again, ABBA is more effective at balancing teams. If you have any examples in which you believe ABAB is more effective, by all means post it here.