Sorry but I have to very much disagree. when it comes to stand up I am easily in the top echelon of players and have several times gone over 100 matches without a loss in stand up only modes. My win rate is in the 90s. just for reference to my experience. Not every fighter is great to use for the Knee elbow spam but the ones that have access to those strikes with high attributes and are taller than the opponent the advantage is ENORMOUS. If you want to work the body with a body hook you put yourself at a highly vulnerable state and have to be very selective when throwing it against a good opponent. If you throw the knee not only do you not have that same vulnerability but you actually have INVULNDERABILITY to hooks and uppercuts because the range on the knee is longer and causes a whiff. Therefore if you know the knee is coming and try to punish it with a big head shot you will actually be the one being punished. It is insane and dumb. Now you say just block it and return. However, the good players using this exploit will always throw the knee elbow combo especially at the heavier weights because if you block the knee the elbow will land before you are able to block it. Now of course a skillful fighter will always be able to beat an average to decent player that is just trying to exploit. But when a good player mixes up the exploit with other tactics and can read and react to your attempts to counter it they can just use the threat of the exploit to dictate the fight. The key here is that the player using the fighter that caters to the exploit and has no moral inhibitions in exploiting for wins has a very large built in advantage. A lot of the top players in ranked are not always the top stand up players and not every character is as exploitable so you might not see all the time, but that does not mean it is very much a true exploit.