All misses being shown as "dodging" is also an issue. Most of the time it's actually heavy armor or a shield soaking all damage. Combat needs that feeling of impact for immersion as well as accurate feedback.
I've seen many videos of players constantly attacking with disadvantage without paying any attention to what's causing it. Perhaps that needs attention. A combat tutorial that tells you what threatened, low light etc. mean.
In D&D misses are balanced by the fact that there is no ridiculous HP bloat. Things can die swiftly when you hit, which is much more satisfying than always needing many hits that never miss.
Agreed.
I've advocated more accurate and varied combat feedback (both verbal and animated) for a long time. There's a lot of psychology in this and showing misses as blocks, deflections and dodges when it is due to shield, armor or dexterity, would make for both better gameplay and likely constitute a higher threshold for save-scumming.
