Temporal graph visualization is quite lacking. It probably depends what one time slice of your network looks like.
If you have 10 to 20 nodes without a ton of edges you could use a fixed circular layout for the nodes on a timeline that just the edges change over time.
More than this and you start getting into hairball territory even without the changes over time. A hairball changing over time is even more useless than a hairball on its own.
The standard force directed layout is really quite useless other than seeing the global structure of the graph. The uselessness is more obvious when you try to change it over time. I suspect the layout is so standard because the visualization looks so cool.
Most data visualization though has this same problem. There is almost this property that the cooler and more beautiful the visualization is, the more useless it is as far as containing any insight about the data itself.
Picture musical notation, 5 horizontal lines where the y-axis is the note (higher on the staff, higher note) and the x-axis is position in time.
Say you have 5 event types, which occur with various frequencies over time. Plot them as dots on the staff.
Draw lines between events which link to each other.
If you draw the lines for the staff, they should be faint, only to help classify the event.
And you can of course have more than 5 event types, just add more lines. Hopefully less than 20 lines, otherwise this starts to get visually very messy.
For print/static graphic? An Ishikawa diagram paired with a, probably keyed, network diagrams(s). For video or interactive there would be more flexibility. Your delivery method ultimately makes many choices for you.
What decisions are to be made based on the data? What tasks are users working on?
Can you draw the graph and actually arrange the nodes on a timeline?
Sankey diagram? Can you give an example?
logic diagrams from electronics?