Luke Smith describes Destiny in a nutshell (Destiny)

by marmot 1333 , Sunday, June 08, 2014, 17:58 (3612 days ago) @ Cody Miller

Strikes - 3 player activities, with bosses and loot at the end. Their goal is a highly replayable activity that will - at higher levels - lead you into the loot game.

Sounds like Nephalem rifts in Diablo 3, and those get old once you've seen most of the set pieces and bosses. They are only replayable insofar as you have desire for gear. Gear sounds less crucial in Destiny than in D3, so we'll see.

I always imagined strikes as similar to firefight mode. However, firefight mode seems even more repetitive than both what they've shown of and how they've described strikes.
That being said, I played a lot of firefight despite the fact that it was repetitive. To each his/her own.

Explore - cruise around the surface of a planet in Fireteams of up to 3, taking odd jobs and tasks for the City. You can find minerals and resources out in the world that you'll have some use for as you find weapons in Destiny that you want to stick with. This is a lower intensity activity.

Sounds like most shitty MMO quests, unless exploration expands story mission options. Filler essentially.

To me it sounds more like looking for easter eggs, looking for hidden away places, maybe you just want to explore the world. There was a quote recently about ramping your shrike off of a jump to find some hidden grotto or something. This is what I imagine "Explore" means. In Skyrim I spent a lot of time just walking from waypoint to waypoint, not even fighting anything. Not doing quests. Just exploring the world. I like this kind of activity.