Are you new to the games? Dumpster diving was a thing in previuos games and sims can even rummage through trashcans. In one of the packs you can even go to a junkyard and gather scraps and furniture, and sims 2 might have had something similar but i am not sure. I would not say the series is changing since the previous games had this aspect too. Maybe the only difference is that you got a focued pack for it in ts4, but still. It seems that you can avoid the things you did not like in this pack while enjoying the other aspects, but this is just what i think as i dont have this pack to confirm.