Minor Pedantic Point of Contention: Quake 1 had the rocket jump "discovery"; by Q3, it was an expected part of the gameplay. However, this does not affect your argument in any way.
In Q3, it was more the way jumping impacted your movement speed which was a discovery. Another example would be the Tribes series, with skiing which was also an abuse of the game physics (and taken as the main movement mechanic in the latest game, Tribes Ascend).
It's nice to see such parts of gameplay emerging from simple bugs. I would argue that it's much more rare nowadays, with games which aim to be always more realistic, and blocking your movement.
> In Q3, it was more the way jumping impacted your movement speed which was a discovery.
Not really sure what you're talking about. Rockets and grenades hugely impacted player speed in Quake 1, but not so much in Quake 3. Check the speed run of the following level to see what I mean:
It was quite serendipitous how although Rocket jumping was "incidental" to Q1 most levels still played extremely well using that feature. Still level-designers who later knew about it and designed for it managed to (ab)use it even more. I designed a level where the entire layout was optimized around rocket-jumping being possible (and encouraged) as much as humanely possible, great fun!
