I don't personally play it and expect it to be anything more than a fun, worry-free game mode with my buddies. I just view it as the perfect practice mode. I like it because I can play with friends who are a lower rank.
I'm not always in the mood for ranked and for pubs, everyone just lands at the first POI and the games over.
I agree that there need to be more game modes. I don't know why they can't add modes to mixtape aside from the 3 it currently has. It's clear that not everyone agrees about 3 strikes but there should be more options aside from Ranked, pubs, and mixtape (the LTM is usually very bad so I don't even count that - take for example the current one, not fun imo).