Yeah, the Flash creation tools will remain in development, simply rebranded as "Animate". The plugin is no longer needed, since Animate can export to HTML/JS/SVG or to video files. This is by far the best outcome: We get to keep the awesome creation tools, but it exports on free/open formats.
You're forgetting that Flash had a lot more than animation at heart. What about the components? They were very useful for both animators and casual developers to easily create interactive animation - which was the whole point. Static animation was only the beginning. The best Flash was interactive.
A huge variety of components from the Flash community. You were presented with an interface within Flash where you could configure the component's options, and very little code was needed to get professional results quickly.
Adobe Animate has nothing like that, and besides Adobe only makes their CC stuff available by subscription which is unappealing to a lot of people.
