There are situations where a character would have to decide to do a 180 and then attack the sky or ground to actually miss. Say, being a few inches away from an ogre, facing it, and then going to strike. You would have to try to intentionally miss it.
After being confused about how someone's armor somehow magically determines whether or not something comes into contact with it, I searched around and found out that "miss" in D&D, for some reason, doesn't mean "did not hit". This should never have been called "missing".
There are situations where "miss" would be the correct word, like with a bow, or slashing at a speedy little brain. The problem there is, it always looks like you hit anyway. There should be animations for missing those.
There is no DM to tell you why and how you missed, it can and should be shown. Maybe it will be, animations in general seem to be far from finished.
For situations where missing would be next to impossible but you don't do any damage, instead of saying "miss" it should just pop up a 0.
