The vast majority of those quake players with 20 years of exp are not good. Its not the skill difference that is the reason why they don't have players its just people don't care.
A lot of TF2 players who were young start playing quake because Yz50/Mike/Clockwork play those games, so we have a reason to care about it, but people from games like Fortnite don't have that, unless they heard about it from playing Kovaks or something, which is the reason why I ran into those Zoomer Fortnite players in the first place.
And in regards to the newer Quake games, they never got big because the old quake pros would rather be playing the old shite and they have no casual people and so no audience for anyone - just desperate attempt of forcing an esport