I didn't think it was so obvious. I literally thought this proved all my suspicions. Now I know. Q2 air rocket and lil Wayne. I feel it scorching in the very depths of my cockles. Quake 2 is the best game of all time. All must bow down to its glory.
While vQ3 (or perhaps CPMA, some might argue) had really reached the point of being an ideal competitive FPS, Q2's engine/physics decisions made it a gem of its own, to an extent that some people well prefer it over other Quakes.
Its slowness (rockets, 600 ms weapon switching, chaingun warm-up and hyperblaster cool-down times), delayed rail and SSG, different armor protection coefficients for standard vs. energy weapons demands more thoughtful gameplay, both tactically and strategically. Pro-active thinking, good map knowledge, careful sound control, and proper choice of weapons had never been more important. And yet wild rail spawn-raping is there and delivers extra fun and adrenaline boost. ;-)
Double-jumps took the movement to the next level: while strafe-jumps and bunny-hopping allowed for greater speeds, double-jumps expanded that to a third dimension. Later games' attempts to introduce "artificial" (i.e., not being a bug) movement techniques like ramp- and wall-jumping are nearly not as interesting and skill-demanding.
See this guy knows. Many folks either forgot or just didn't give the game enough of a chance (probably started with q3a). Just as many people forgot how q3a was in comparison to ql, it's just not the same game at all.
tbh I would always went for Q2 from 2000 to 2015 , if it was more popular. I found deep meta game for duel in Q2 is in different level compare to Q3. And these double jumps, chaingun , rail with delay, ledges.. I would fap for Q2 remake from ID.. Sadly My Q2 experience was like 1000duels total in all these years combined and mostly in EDGE..
Q4 was never really a remake of Q2 (multiplayer-wise), they (Raven/id) merely tied their stories for a singleplayer campaign.
I honestly don't know what they were expecting from Q4 as a competitive FPS with its physics and gameplay, leaving aside the embarrassing early bugs, lack of decent tourney mod, and all those setup/server/demofiles incompatibilities people had to struggle for months if not years.