I'd kinda disagree, though I need to deviate from Thargoids/Aliens specifically to do so.
I won't spend time debating whether the whole Salome thing was "good or not"... think everyone already knows I'm in the "not" camp for multiple reasons. But fundamentally, that was really nothing more than FD-endorsed player-group canon injected into the game with a pretty rubbish supporting activity (Open-roleplay events are absolutely unworkable, period). There's plenty of groups with interesting "fanfiction" type lore which FD could support if they wanted to[1]. Fundamentally though, the Salome event suffered exactly the same thing everything else in the game suffers
IMO There's absolutely no shortage of reasonable plot hooks or story arcs FD have introduced... besides all the stuff about Thargoids. League of Reparation/Nova Imperium/Duradrive/Vitadyne have all been perfectly reasonable "stories". Players haven't cared about them though because there's a big, black hole of nothingness when it comes to in-game mechanics supporting these stories. You've heard me complain about this before... the things I posted above are just the tip of the iceberg compared to the exploded asteroid, HIP 22460, Wreaken Industries, MetaDrive and so on.
Take that celebrity who disappeared (I don't even know her name, the story was so uninspiring). It could've been something as simple as "go to any system within 20LY of the system she was meant to be at, and you'll see salvage missions for Escape Pods worth considerably more credits than your average salvage mission". The mission blurb could be "We've detected an escape pod beacon in system X, go check it out, it could be the missing celeb!". Let that run for a week before she says "Oh, yeah, it was a hoax!" at a very simple implementation. Alternately for a more complex implementation (and taking liberties with the idea of her being another Halsey/Thargoid abduction?) have those same missions, but have a rare chance of some Thargoid wreckage/salvage also spawning in the instance, and when you hand in the mission it adds some context that it appeared to be one of the crew from the ship. That would start the tinfoil... and if she suddenly turns up safe and sound, suddenly things get *really* interesting.
The, take Nova Imperium for example. Yet another rubbish CG which was never going to be won by NI due to the absence of a period where player-support could build for the faction.
Have you seen where they are now? They hold two assets in Paresa now for God's sake, that's two key victories in that system, and there's nothing stopping them going to war for control of the Paresa System at this rate. That's because people *do* support them, just not enough to survive a CG against credit-farmers (who side with the winning faction) and a superpower with well-established support, when they're still a fledgling nobody faction. If the goal was to make NI a power or something; how about go out to the player groups and ask "Who want's to put their faction up as supporting NI?". While the mechanics of that get sorted out, FD develops more story around NI, and maybe introduces special missions or other activities in support of them. My faction would've supported NI, and I'm sure others would have, and then instead of a virtual Imperial civil-war playing out in one system, we could've had a *proper* multi-front rebellion across the Empire, with conflicts in 8 or so systems. Don't make a CG of it, but advertise it,, and the venues where they win could become Powerplay[2] control systems for a new NI power.
tl;dr I think there's plenty of absolutely reasonable storylines coming out of FD, just an absolute dearth of related activities. I'm not asking for players to have outright control over all the story outcomes, but at the least have some activities in-game which players can do to at the very least give the feeling of support.
EDIT: Take this recent article for example:
https://community.elitedangerous.com/galnet/uid/5c5b04c165f38b692e2ea038
Who's Ambrose Foundation? Never heard of them til today. Where are they? Nowhere, according to EDDB. OK, so we can't do anything.
How about we get given a system, where Ambrose Foundation is a faction, and they're offering missions to donate money (Or heck, let's make a CG where pilots can donate arbitrary volumes of credits; this is kinda how donations should work anyway)
Offering some freelance work to interested commanders would definitely be an idea right now! We could go scan installations, salvage data banks, transport investigators. But nope. Nothing.
[1] Notwithstanding numerous issues which would arise, which I won't bother going into here.
[2] Notwithstanding the forum rage that might cause because powerpants is a failed implementation, IMO.