I guess I see most if not all combat misses" as in fact being outright misses - you either didn't connect with the foe at all or your connection was of so little impact that the foe could - and did - ignore it completely.
Contrast this with being caught in a fireball. There's no way it can miss you entirely, the question is merely how much damage did it cause.
And it only just this minute occured to me after nearly 40 years: the save-for-half mechanic might be no more than a simple way of replicating the idea that not everyone is going to take the same amount of damage from a given effect. More accurate - but also more cumbersome - would be to roll the damage separately for each creature in the area.
Rolling a 2 and being done is, to me, just part of the game.