That comparison is at best a stretch. It makes sense if you're young, but at the time of release Quake was the one of the most graphically and technologically advanced games available. One of the first truly modern FPS games, one of the first fully 3D texture mapped games, one of the first real-time action games to be widely played on the internet, one of the first to take advantage of 3D acceleration, etc. At release Dwarf Fortress was talked about in the exact same way it is talked about today...
The mechanical depth you're talking about is a lot less like the depth people talk about when talking about Dwarf Fortress simulation complexity, and closer to emergent complexity of found in any good multiplayer video game. If you're talking about the Quake family tree, some of the most played current day first person shooters (CS:GO, COD, TF2) are direct ancestors of Quake, sharing some of Quake's source code.
I have a ton of respect for Quake, its movement mechanics and its influence, but I don't really get the comparison.
The mechanical depth you're talking about is a lot less like the depth people talk about when talking about Dwarf Fortress simulation complexity, and closer to emergent complexity of found in any good multiplayer video game. If you're talking about the Quake family tree, some of the most played current day first person shooters (CS:GO, COD, TF2) are direct ancestors of Quake, sharing some of Quake's source code.
I have a ton of respect for Quake, its movement mechanics and its influence, but I don't really get the comparison.