I think it would be fun with a group. I had fun with Travis and Rob when I did it. But when i'm just doing them with randoms it gets awful boring (just like most other games).
I see that it's something to change things up, but if I wanted loads of engrams, i'd just do heroic strikes at this point in time.
And if I help with someone else's rune, it would be nice to get something. I noticed sometimes I can get an engram to drop out of the chest, but most times just rep. Perhaps if it was a guaranteed engram every event I'd like it more. It's hard to activate a rune when 2-3 randoms are fighting over it too.
I hope they can keep this fresh though. It's a cool thing to have during patrols.