People can enjoy busywork but many won't. So it's best to keep busywork limited to optional meaningless "bonus achievements" that don't have a significant effect on the main game.
Loot is probably a bit too important to be relying on busywork.
Having a button to "switch off busywork" seems like a poor solution too.
Previous BG games had settings for companion AI behaviour (even if it was purely combat focused). I would prefer that to an on/off button. I want my companions to feel less like mindless thralls as we go exploring. Right now we have the odd dialogue exchange to mitigate that, but I think we can ask for more.
