Ok, now we are talking! I want to start by saying how much I am appreciating the discourse here. We won’t all always like what is going on but this is an amazing community and it is great to see conversation happening in a calmer and more upbeat manner.
I will start by saying thank you to @pshanew as this post is very well researched and written and covers a lot of the open items. I will just make a few minor clarifications:
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for Watch Together, it was mentioned as “removed”. We didn’t remove it from any clients, instead, at that point in time, made a decision to not build it on the new clients. It still exists and works on anything that isn’t updated to the new experience yet. As for future state? The outcry has definitely been heard. While it is not a current development or project target for us, if we were set on a message like “definitely not” then I would state as much, so I hope that we can build this again in the future
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on downloads, I have commented on the state of downloads in the past. I am also happy to provide a new update here in that I was part of a project meeting this week about improving the current state of downloads with enhancements and we also started talking about adding in more of the “smarts” around downloads which would get us much closer to the previous experience, albeit on a much firmer and more reliable foundation
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Casting is also an area that we are aware of and are working on. I am not part of the group working on this, but it is a known focus area
Almost forgot - there were a few specific questions from here:
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Is making the web app the primary tool for tasks like queue management the official, intended direction for Plex going forward?
No. While it is currently in that state today, our longer-term intent is to provide a unified management experience that not only includes things like queue (aka playlist) management but also server management that would be available on clients with decent input functionality (the wording here may read as odd, but I simply mean that TV clients are a massive challenge for management functions due to their limited input mechanisms. Aka remotes suck for typing). We will need some time to build this out and also have to hit a parity point across clients first with the new experience, but I am very excited to get started on this intent -
Is there a plan to restore these management features to the native clients, or should users adapt to the new web-dependent workflow?
See answer above - but today the web workflow is the best area to manage things like playlists and this will change in the future (meaning: not in 2025)
Last comment here, regarding roadmaps. I would love to get something out for all of us to cuss and discuss on here 
One of our biggest challenges, and something that I believe sets us apart from other personal media solutions, is that we provide a comprehensive set of clients across a HUGE amount of devices. We also work really hard to make the experience consistent across all of those devices. Until we have that point of parity, it is very challenging to present any new features, projects, or targets. You can probably guess why, but without resources to work on them (due to our ongoing parity work), conveying intent with any form of timeline is probably a bad idea. However, my commitment is that I will continue working to improve communication and give more clarity and hopefully at some point we have something that resembles a roadmap published somewhere. 
