Step by step guide to a more enjoyable online experience

Classic Fighting Games King of Fighters XIII
1

I see tons of people complaining about KOF13’s netcode and I’ll be the first to admit that it’s fairly underwhelming. However I do believe that good online experiences are possible so I’d like to post some steps that might help others have a better time online. This is not guaranteed to work for everyone but it’s worth a try.

1: In your router, turn on the DMZ for your 360/PS3. If you can’t do this for some reason, open the following ports depending on your console:

Required ports for 360:
88 UDP
3074 TCP & UDP
53 TCP & UDP
80 TCP
2869 TCP
10243 TCP
1900 UDP
10280 to 10284 UDP (that’s a range, don’t mess up)

Required ports for PS3:
80 TCP
443 TCP
3478 to 3480 TCP (another range)
5223 TCP
8080 TCP
3478 to 3479 UDP (range)
3658 UDP

For an example of what this might look like, click here.

When you do this, make sure the DMZ or ports are opened for your console’s IP, NOT your computer’s! If you haven’t done this already, manually set a static IP address to your console. This is necessary for port forwarding and DMZ to work correctly. For steps on how to do this for 360, click here. For PS3, here.

A few notes about these guides: for the PS3, choose wired, not wireless. For the 360, you can find your ISP’s DNS server on Windows by going to Start > Run/Search > typing in CMD and pressing enter > typing IPCONFIG /ALL in the command prompt (caps not necessary). Locate the section called “DNS Servers” and copy down the IP.

DMZ stands for Demilitarized Zone. It opens a device up to traffic on all ports and is therefore faster and more fool-proof than doing each one individually. It’s not recommended for a PC but is (as far as I know) safe for consoles. Here is a screenshot of my Linksys DMZ page: http://oi46.tinypic.com/2eannh4.jpg. I set my 360’s static IP to 192.168.1.200, so that’s the address I’d use for the DMZ. Your numbers will vary as will the layout and options available depending on the model of your router what IP your console is set to.

2: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES ATTEMPT WIRELESS PLAY… WITH ANYONE! Both you and your opponent MUST be wired. If you can’t go wired, what are you doing playing fighting games online?

3: Make sure your network isn’t tied up with other connections. If you or your opponent have a clogged connection due to torrents, streams or other downloads, your experience will be shitty.

4: Create Player Match rooms with a 3 bars and up latency requirement. Anything less than 3 bars is usually unacceptable, but sometimes 2 bars can be playable (not recommended however).

5: When someone joins, test the connection. If it’s good and the player is decent, add them to your friends list.

6: Enjoy playing KOF13 online with your new green bar connection buddies.

Hope this helps some people!

Edit: Forgot a port for PS3, updated.

2

Nice, but maybe a little elaboration on DMZ for everyone, other than that, thanks!

3

my console is wired and DMZed and the online experience is still an atrocity 90% of the time, and i only play in 3+ bars. even 4 bars is usually assy somehow. this is right after getting playable games with select european and japanese players in VF5 btw, so i’m not going to play the “everybody else’s connection is shit except mine” card.

4

There’s no blood in that stone, folks.

5

Sorry to hear you’re having a bad experience. My friends and I find 3 and 4 bars very good on 360.

Make sure you manually set your console to have a static (unchanging) IP address, and that the DMZ is pointing to that address. If your console is using a dynamic IP it could be possible that your DMZ settings aren’t working because your console’s IP keeps changing. If you already did this and verified the console/DMZ is set up correctly, then I guess you’re out of luck!

6

hey guys I just wanted to confirm that I am still able to play while firewalled / routered (no ports opened). and while the bars will generally show accurately (sometimes minus a bar) the connection will be terrible, there will be slowdown certain areas and mostly it will have a heavy latency regardless of how many bars i get. after i put DMZ back on the XBox i’m back to little or no lag again

i found that sometimes (most likely during events with power outtages) my router will unrecognize the xbox and the profile for it having DMZ or opened ports will go away. if I notice that my games are extremely laggy, i try to check out my router settings to make sure my xbox is still recognized (the old profile will be there, but a new unspecified connection will show up which is the current xbox profile without its settings) and to reapply any changes that need to be done.

also keep in mind DMZ can be fickle depending on your router. I remember when I was on a Belkin router that for example Steam would sometimes screw up with the DMZ and could not connect to the steam login servers. so DMZ is not always the answer. if you’re getting a bad connection where you have a solid connection that isn’t in use, and you’re running it through the DMZ, perhaps try to manually do the ports for xbox and see if it’s any better.

finally - KoF 13 netcode WILL not pick up the slack the way say Soul Calibur 5 or VF5’s netcode will. what works on there might not work for KoF. While I can play Soul Calibur 5 with a ton of dropped frames and not notice much, just a minor amount of frame dropping can ruin a KoF match. so make sure you optimize the connection and that it’s as stable as you can get it

7

Thanks for the anecdote, Nax. I suspect many people suffer heavy lag from improperly configured routers.

I updated the OP to emphasize the necessity of setting a static IP to your console and to include a few notes about the external guides. Looking forward to hearing more feedback to these solutions, whether good or bad - just make sure that if you try these steps that you do them properly!

Also, a downside to these solutions is that if your opponent is still behind a non-open router, you can still lag. If possible, try having your opponent perform these same steps (not usually feasible, I know).

8

Its so sad that the online play is so bad in this game, thankfully i’ve been able to have decent matches about 70% of the time and of course, added some 3 bars players to my friend list, it doesn’t always work but it gets the job done most of the time, even with a Wireless connection (too lazy to go wired every time i play -_-’ ), of course it helps that i’m from Mexico because even with the awful bandwidth most of the guys a play who are from Mexico too have a decent connection and are great players.
Again, is not Blazblue online, but like i said, it gets the job done.