I have used 5 minute quarters my entire NCAA 06 career. This may be due to lack of patience.
However, the main reason for using 5 minute quarters is the ongoing quest to mimic real life stats and scores.
I have always cared about realistic scores than stats.
Since I usually field good offenses, I first try to mimic realistic scores for good offenses.
I also have felt most great offenses on a season-by-season basis typically average over 40 points per games.
So this is what I go by when I picked 5 minute quarters as you usually see my teams score 42-49 per game.
However, this doesn’t mean your other stats reflect what happens in real life.
I am not in front of my PS2, but I can tell you that my stats are sometimes not close to what I want them to be.
I am satisfied with my offensive numbers on 5 minute quarters.
I can put up realistic stats with QBs, HBs, WRs, and TEs, good enough to win the Heisman with most of these positions.
I do not know if my overall yardage it where it needs to be, but I think I am close.
Defensively is where there may be an issue (if you call it an issue).
A friend of mine who is an avid follower of the blog and likes to keep track of his dynasties plays his games on 9 minute quarters so his defensive players can get more accurate tackles.
However, his offensive stats may be inflated as a result.
Conclusion
I don’t know if there is a sweet spot in terms of quarter length and stats correlation.
I think it is different for everyone, and you need to decide what quarters length is best for you.
You need to decide what is more important to you: accurate scores, stats, or something else. Maybe I need to change from 5 minutes to something else.
I do know that I am satisfied with my scores and offensive stats, but maybe I need to move it up a tad to help with the defensive stats.
If I increase the length, then my dynasty videos will be even longer as I normally post 1-hour-long videos.
Please put in the comments section your experiences with different quarter lengths and your reasoning behind your decision.
When I started back playing I was on 7 mins quarters. Fast games vma decent chunk of stats on both sides of the ball. I then decided to go up to 9 to help out the defense but also get my backups some tuning especially in blowouts. 9 mins sometimes are long but I just haven’t changed it. May try my best game on 8 and see how that goes.
I go with 6 or 7 really based on defensive stats as well
I go with 6-7 mins myself as well.
I, like you Al, go with 5 minutes for my quarters.
To be honest, the only stats, offensive or defensive, that are somewhat deflated because of quarter length would be number of tackles. Everything else is realistic, stats-wise, for me. With 5 minutes for my quarters, my top linemen/linebackers (if they’re any good) can get 10+ sacks in a season while top secondary players get 5+ INTs. Such stat lines are pretty representative of stat lines for similar level players in real life. If I extended the quarters to 8+ minutes then I’d be breaking all the sack and interception records…as it is, even with quarters of 5 minutes, one of my linemen from my Rice dynasty came one sack away from tying the all-time NCAA record.
Good stuff.
Yeah…sorry for the duplicate reply. I didn’t see my initial reply come through so I tried again.
I guess it depends on what you’re going for. I like to have mostly realistic stats for my players, and for me quarters of 5 minutes do that job. It looks like another person likes to go for the realistic number of plays. I guess it depends on personal preference.
I go with 5 minutes like you Al. Only tackle numbers are somewhat deflated, but my experiences are that even sack and interception numbers are pretty realistic when you have quarters of 5 minutes. In my Rice dynasty, a lineman came one sack away from tying the NCAA record. He would’ve crushed it to unrealistic proportions with longer quarters.
I play with 5 minute quarters. The stats for the year seem about right, the scores are realistic and it allows me to play a game in about an hour.
I’ve used 8 min quarters after some research, the cpu tends to avg roughly 60-65 offensive plays per game during a season, and after having cpu vs cpu games, I realized 8 mins was the closest thing to what the other 118 teams were doing…..it’s up to me at that point to decide on my pace-of-play to either match the norm or be unique. That’s just my opinion though, I was looking for realistic play counts.
Yeah, I guess it comes down to what start or metric is most important to you and work from there.
Yea for sure, your 5 qtrs works well for what you’re trying to achieve, your scores and yards end up being very realistic, and you manage to entertain in a 1 hr video as opposed to 90-120 mins
I used 8 minutes back in the day when the game came out. After revisiting the game today, I use 5 minutes. I don’t care as much about the stats as I used to and I want to play more games in less time!
Hey, whatever setting makes you want to play the game more is the correct setting for you. That’s what it’s all about!
In ncaa 06 is it possible to simulate only defense or attack?
No, other than changing the control settings from user to CPU every possession which would get old quick.
Thanks
If you just call your defense and do all pre-snap stuff and then lay controller down your player will play out the play. I used to do this when I was trash at playing D. It works best by controlling a down lineman just in case you bump the sticks and your LB or S is just standing there.
I always played 15 min. When I first got the game now I realize how in lame it is adjusted sliders thinking would help and it didn’t watched cpu game of Florida State at Tennessee and it wsa 41 to 3 with over 10 min left in the 2nd quarter and was like what’s this bs! But I’ve watched Al’s YouTube and it looks more realistic! So I’m willing to give it a try. I’m retarded I guess cuz I race full length race in NASCAR games lol
I can’t imagine playing 15 minute quarters or 500 lap races, lol.
Funny, I actually just went back to playing the default 5 min qtrs in NCAA and 6 mins in Madden. At 41, after the wife and my 4 year old go to bed, I want more out of my nightly play time than 1 dynasty or CFM game listing well over an hour. For a while, I was done with sports games because of this. Ha
That’s basically what I’m doing now. I eventually plan on increasing Heisman sliders in 06 now that I can win National titles with B/B- talent. Since starting Madden 07, I do not plan on touching its sliders for a very long time.