I think the main reason why Maxis are not adding too many options and features like mods do is because it adds to their budget and their development process, offering too many options will add to their development time, they have to make everything in a pack after all.
But still, there are some features and lack of settings which really surprises me, I recently downloaded a mod which disables the Thrift Store notification from High School Years, because Maxis set that one to trigger every day. Why on earth did they do that?