Madden 11 Ranked Online Games Now Use Six Minute Quarters

In a change that just recently appeared, and follows the patch that arrived during the week, Madden 11 ranked games have now moved to six minute quarters from the seven minutes they had been set to since last year. Games were deemed to be taking too long to complete and it appears a compromise was made when considering the seven minutes vs a proposed five minutes. Accelerated clock remains on.

The GameFlow feature, largely advertised as producing quicker games, is turned on but the ability to go into the full playbook remains. I have had an issue with the setup from when I first heard about it because of the potential to create a very disjointed pace. That has certainly been realized in some instances and even simply the process of skipping past GameFlow to get to the playbook and choose plays adds time. They added the scouting reports, to be analyzed between plays, which when used slows things down even more. Even if games aren’t taking longer they feel like they are taking longer when waiting around for an opponent.

The biggest issue though isn’t the structure to the online games but instead Madden 11 in itself. Scoring trends high online and because of the offensive proficiency game lengths are extended. Reducing the quarter length may trim some of that but it won’t change the balance. It only will reduce the number of possessions that each side gets, make it more difficult to make a comeback when trailing, and not provide enough plays in the rare occasion there is a defensive battle. On the flip side it will make the necessary time to invest in each online game less, and at six minutes probably won’t result in the games feeling too brief or too limited in number of possessions because of how effective offenses tend to be.

What do you think of the decision to reduce the quarter length to six minutes in Madden 11 online ranked games? Leave your thoughts in the comments!