Community Goals were some of the most engaging activities. Not all were great, some (especially the later ones) were quite generic in approach, but there were quite a few gems that will stay in the memories of those who took part. New Yembo (ok, mostly because it was the first), Hutton Mug with its multiple 0.22ly travels, Epsilon Indi Bourbon with its legendary 79 bottles of booze, the whole Cerberus Plague story with the quarantined stations, spreading infections, lockdowns (oddly prophetic in hindsight) and the birth of teabagging, Jaques jump, the Spaceship One rescue, the construction of 11 Parsecs, the shism in the Empire with Nova Imperium, quite a few other wars that were packed into a evolving background story.
The payouts back then were a lot of money, 20M on top of the profits was a lot, the rare 100M ones got everyone going crazy. Not like now when you just have to look at some icy rocks and earn another billion.
Some had their flaws, like unbalanced goals, but those often created the real stories. Not many were able to take part in the rescue of Spaceship One, but those 700ish people have something special, they rescued the former president Halsey. Epsilon Indi Bourbon was really high, in the beginning even tier 1 looked hard to make. In the end a huge combined effort of the community was able to nearly make Tier 8 (except those 749 units ... any rumours of them being stowed away in some secret stash somewhere are bereft of any basis)
In the end, they became more formulaic in appreach, quite copy&paste repetitive, but they still focused activity into certain areas, that gave a sense of direction. PvPers flocked to them, to shoot or to defend other players, wings were formed, acquaintances became friends.
I hope something similar comes back at some point, probably after Odyssey.