Making Fair and Balanced Teams in FPS

I already posted my thoughts on KDR vs Kill Spread in FPS. Now I will show why Kill Spread over KDR is more important in fair team making.

To start off, this actually came up in a round of Halo: Reach over system link recently. It was 3v3, and my team got smoked pretty badly. So the other team offered to give us their worst guy (Spread of -3), saying "4v2, that'll make it fair." In real life, yeah, I'd take the extra guy even if he sucked. However, in a race to a score, it's different. Giving us the guy with a -3 spread  actually would hurt our team, as I am sure you would agree if you've read my thoughts on KDR in FPS.

Now, how do we determine a fair match? Well, let's again take a look at KDR first. I have in front of me a set of people's stats that we'll look at. We'll use these stats this whole post, so I am going to let you see them up front. I am making up their names as well, to protect the horrible players.

Person                  Avg Kills           Avg Deaths                KDR                      Avg Spread
Bob                             4                       2                            2.0                               +2
John                            4                        1                            4.0                               +3
Joe                              3                        5                            .6                                 -2
Tim                             5                        5                              1.0                               0
Kevin                          5                         2                           2.5                               +3
Bill                              6                        3                             2.0                               +3

If you were to use the KDR of these guys, and matched up the top 3 and bottom 3, it would appear as if the top 3 would win (avg KDR 2.2 vs avg KDR 1.83) pretty easily. If the players each got their average kills however, the bottom team would win by 5. And if they all got their average spread, then the bottom team would win by 3.

NOTE-At this point it must be stated that these are AVERAGE scores. It is impossible to get these scores using these teams in one match. The KDR and Kill Spread over one match will always come out even when all players are taken into account, unless there's been suicides/betrayals.

The good thing about using average spread, is that if that is my average spread, you have a concrete number upon which you can base my skill. If I have an average spread of +4, you know I am going to get 4 more kills than deaths. It doesn't  matter if I die 10 times, I'll kill 14. If I die 5, I'll kill 9. You know how many net points I am going to get the team. With KDR, if I have a KDR of 2.0, that could be 2/1, 10/5, 20/10. You don't know how many net points I am going to get. You do know that I am going to help the team, just not how much.

So, using the average kill spread method, you can balance out teams for more fun gameplay; for if you had Kevin, Bill, and Joe on a team agains the others, (avg spread of 1.33 v 1.66)and they all got their usual Kills/Deaths, then the score would be (Counting kills as points, and deaths as points for the enemy) 22 to 23.

This will be clear to some, and unclear to others. This is about as good as I can explain it without showing you in person.

   - Sapper Woody