Development mode does work differently from a deployed app since it serves a different purpose.
Dev mode needs to be fast and always update with the latest changes, so caching and optimizing aren’t really something you would want in that environment. A deployed site, on the other hand, does benefit from optimization strategies to speed up site loading and reduce resource usage.
Next attempts to make this easy with some default settings that suit most apps. But there are ways configure different behavior, as you did with force-dynamic. You can find more info about the default settings in the Next.js docs: Building Your Application: Caching | Next.js
I hope that helps! Please let me know if you have any other questions