Re: “When Things Start Happening” and “When Things Quiet Down” specifically: these two criteria require that you change mode when executing the action. Going further, these conditions are currently coded to not execute the phrase if the system is already in the mode being changed to by the phrase. Confusing enough? 
We do this to avoid a situation in which the phrase(s) keep triggering over and over again. If you set the action’s “Change the mode to” field then these criteria will appear. @Tyler is right, It’s been like this since it was introduced as an option, so I suspect the mode change was in your configuration previously. Not sure how else you could have done it. Off the top of my head, I don’t think you can set up the particular use case you’re looking for without a mode change. A custom SmartApp could do the trick.