Jared Berbach, the Lead Modes Producer, tweeted:

Let's talk about the current state of FFA DM in @PlayVALORANT and the future of FFA and "warmup" style modes.

We have a lot of plans here, but also a lot of work to do to get to the place that we desire to be. Curious on all of your thoughts about modes/goals...

Thread.

Currently, we're seeing relatively healthy queue times, match quality/disparity, and participation in FFA DM. The population that plays the mode is a relatively low one compared to other modes, but they are very dedicated. Satisfaction is decent, but we think it could be higher!

Our current hypothesis is that the mode is singular, but is trying to serve two different audiences:

Audience 1: People who want a FFA style match with a beginning, middle, end, and a winner. These players are currently being served a bit more than audience 2. The health pickups, respawns, map rotation, match length etc. all serve this need relatively well. These players want a short mode and quick action to fit into limited time windows or in between high stress matches.

Audience 2: People who strictly want to warm up or put on some music and do what @hazedCS is talking about for 2 hours straight, either just getting in the zone or practicing aim skill in a rapid fashion against live human targets. This audience generally wants to get in and stay in for a long time, but then also leave when they are ready. In order to do this correctly, we need some tech that we're spinning up and working on: Commonly referred to as join in progress (or "drop in")

Right now, VALORANT game services don't check to see if new players want to join. We also need to rewrite matchmaking to accomodate joining players to matches in progress and seeing if they are "healthy" from a people and skill perspective. Actively working on and planning this.

This work is actually relatively complex, so we're putting in the time to make sure it's great plan for the future of VALORANT and a great play experience. I know it can be frustrating to wait as a player, but we hope this is worth it.

Once we have this tech, we can create a game mode that is strictly for Audience 2 above. FFA "Infinite/Warmup". We'll likely let players play very long or infinite matches, only closing down a match if they become unhealthy (tm). We can join and let players leave when they want.

In this type of match, we can also change a bunch of the game rules. Maybe you always go back to full health and fully reloaded weapon on kill. We're flexibile here, and will try to accomodate what players are asking for to maximize uptime in targeting heads and getting aim prac.

This leaves audience 1. Our hope here is to create more of a novel or rotating type mode experience that challenges players who want to play FFA DM but also have a match beginning and end, and a winner. This matches more to popular non tac games. We'll also have more freedom...

We can try things like killstreaks, powerups, or make FFA matches more akin to Escalation/Arms Race/Gun Game. We can change various rules or even add teams. We can still keep these games under 10m to fit into lifestyle.

Again, we're taking our time to make sure this is an awesome player experience. This also opens up the potential for us to prioritize other work like potentially rotating more modes, or maybe even the tech to allow people to "warm up" while in queue for something like ranked...

Although that's significantly more work than the join in progress tech I mentioned above. Yet another entire complex feature, but one we hope to potentially prioritize in the future.

The thing I want to stress here is that we (hopefully) understand the need being expressed here. If you don't think we've got it yet, let us know! Definitely open to feedback and keeping the conversation open!