Most of the time though the tasks will simply have you going through areas you've already explored, so all you'll likely encounter along the way is more dull busywork like the same generic enemies you've killed a bazillion times already.

I have found new areas after 100 hours of game play and beating the game, so it has to be taken at face value that there would be no new areas to discover even in continents you've explored to quite an extent. It is also the first time you are required to chain your probes to exceed a certain amount of credits if I'm not mistaken. If someone wants an Ares, this system must basically be mastered. Granted that's end game gear, but a great jump in. Plus good to get your credits up because early game most of the best equipment needs to be bought. These small missions are also great to acquire affinity with party members even if you killed them a billion times, missions give affinity. Change members and try new combinations of characters and learn about them.

Yet again, it's all about how you approach things, even the supposed mundane.

That's the thing though, I don't want to grind through mountains of mundane-ness to get to the awesome stuff. Truly great games are awesome through and through with no mundane filler.

And that's why it's just supposedly mundane

Grinding the same basic baddies and doing the same routine quests (kill x number of y, collect x number of y) a gazillion times is genuinely mundane.

Not if you're trying new equipment, augments, classes, characters, arts, and discovering areas near where you collect y that you never thought you'd be able to access. Then through that gaining new affinity missions and learning more about the cast of survivors.  

By the time I hit 90 hours I'd tried every class, and the characters and equipment had become samey. And learning about the survivors was no incentive because they were all so boring and lacking charm.

Curl has a point compare what XCX does and how BOTW does it, X the game makes you do grinding tasks to encourage exploration which results in it feeling not like natural exploration which undermines the experience of X's game world and feels like a mundane task you don't want to bother with while if you look at BOTW's execution of exploration a player is only ever in a location of their own accord because the game is like do what you want so players end up building their own path through the game and teaching themselves what to do which involves exploring, if X had that execution it would have been received a lot better than it already is. The irony is that in XBC and XBC2 the more plot focused games I felt more inclined to explore it was actually when doing the few mandatory grinding parts early on where I didn't feel like exploring due to how mundane and forced it feels.

Point being a game shouldn't really have to drag the player around to explore compelling content should already do that.

By the time you hit 90 hours you can fly over most enemies.

There isn't nearly as many systems you need to learn in BOTW either. Most of these tasks are to help the player learn some of these systems in the game.