Anyone else notice that there is almost no advantage at all to standing and striking? Slams are a one-in-three guessing game that results in more damage than ten standing strikes, and are incredibly easy to perform. When on top on the ground, you can throw strikes and transition block at the same time with only a rudimentary understanding of the ground game. On top of that, standing strikes are no more likely to cause flash KOs than strikes thrown from the top when grounded, and are run the risk of getting you caught into a clinch and slammed for more damage than you could possibly hope to cause while striking. We all know that it's practically impossible to recover once a very skilled player takes you down. I guarantee the competetive scene for this game will feature absolutely no standing strikes in any situation. I would say Yuke's should have a look at the balance in this regard, because the game is becoming pretty one-dimensional very quickly. Any thoughts?

I think it all depends on the fighter.  If I'm using Chuck or Rampage i can strike and do damage.  On the other hand if I'm using Lyoto or Damien Maia i cannot for the life of me stand and strike against anybody with skill.

You can easily witn a fight with only standing strikes, you just have to be good at defending takedowns, which really isn't too difficult.

If you have good striking skills and are using a good striker, you can smash on guys standing and win fights.  It's not my game, personally, but I've faced some guys who knew how to stand and strike and defend against my takedowns and clinch game and worked me pretty good.

It seems that the way to win with standing strikes is to enter that weird thing where your strikes are timed in such a way that the other guy is kind of stuck there... I'm sure you've had it happen to you before. You kind of stand there and get hit 10 times and can't back up, block correctly, or seemingly do anything. I think maybe if you do nothing but strong strikes, it stuffs the animation of anything the other fighter does? I'm not sure how it works, but something happens when you're getting hit in a certain way that prevents you from moving backwards.