Tiliala has a Tourist Beacon that mentions INRA. This was before any INRA bases started appearing. Granted, it's not a lead into solving a puzzle, I think it's a piece of lore giving a hint of future story development.
I think that FD are using Tourist Beacons, Unregistered Comms Beacons (UCB) and Listening Posts to do some of the work done previously only in local Galnet. None of these are perfect (and the UCB has the downside that they only activate at certain times - a casual player finding one is unlikely even to get the message!). There are scannable data points at some installations that also give similar clues. All these potentially work as 'hooks' to allow a passing player to be drawn into a puzzle or mystery and I suspect that there will be more of this with the development of personal narrative. Without a general source to drive people to search or be curious, though, I think it will struggle - the Rift mystery needed only a brief mention in Reclamation to inspire the search of the Formidine Rift but where is the inspiration for new mysteries and stories? Main Galnet needs to do more, or there needs to be some other in-game media organisation disseminating (possible vague) background story / myths / rumours on a large scale.
That’s all fine, but:
1/ FDev need to supply a process for the breadcrumbs. Hopefully that will be the personal narrative but even so scanning a beacon where the data will be lost from your emails automatically isn’t a good option. They need an in game journal to store the information for future access. Doing a long trip to revisit a tourist beacon doesn’t work. Neither does heading off to YouTube. We need to be able to access our archives in the game.
2/ such things need to be conditional and logically so. As we know people will post the end results. If that is, for example, finding a base that base should be persistent. Once done by a person it needs a reason to walk through again. Simple options like collecting part of an encryption key at various steps and leads that can vary location such as tracking down the right pilot can work, but if they allow it most people will just jump to the end.
3/ it needs to be ongoing. The galaxy is already becoming littered with sight seeing points. It needs an ongoing development rather than just deadending on something pretty.
4/ it needs to be rewarding. That will mean different things to different players. But it needs rewarding gameplay and an end reward. If running to form FDev will just think a credit payout will do, but some of us want more. Opening up contacts and other related content for example. Being able to try and change things, fight the bad guys or even join them.
The Inra stuff for example. Even if just delivering the Jamiesons logs to Lori bumped your rep, opened up other options or quicker/better engineering it would provide something tangible for effort put in and would make sense from an RP perspective for a living galaxy.
My fear is dead end trails giving lore and credits for delivery and assassination missions with RNG enemies. The potential to do better is there though, it’s up to FDev to take it.