A poorly designed ability can have multiple problems. Those problems need not be intertwined in a way that makes them all simultaneously relevant to any given example.
And an ability can be not to your taste without being poorly designed. It bothers you, it's never bothered me in close to a decade of playing and DMing for paladins.
I would argue that having to take an OA from shooting a ranged weapon is a much bigger penalty than having disadvantage on the attack in the majority of cases.
It's not simply a matter of preference or "opinion". it's poorly designed because it creates a perversion of the gameplay loop where a player changes or waits to declare their action with a retcon after seeing the result & I've explained that previously. The fact that you are ignoring that in order to dismissively reframe it as a mere matter of preference & opinion speaks volumes about the indefensibility of that design.
No, it speaks volumes about how insignificant a 'perversion' I consider it to be. It is something that fundamentally offends your sensibilities, but doesn't bother me. That's pretty much the definition of personal preference.
I also suggested that range shooters grant advantage to melee opponents as above.
Even if that were accepted for purposes of discussion, the reasons behind preference are far more valuable than the preference itself. Do you truly have no reasons more developed than "it doesn't bother me" for your rather outspoken support of this particular design element?
Why would I need to? Aside from you, I've never found anyone to be particularly opposed to it - and based upon the playtest, it's clearly not going anywhere.
On the contrary, if I consider a game element to be entirely acceptable and fully functional, I very much hope that they won't mess with it beyond some minor refinements. And so far, they haven't.
