Q4Max adds many features and fixes to Quake 4, making it a much more enjoyable and complete game. For this reason, most servers running Quake 4 are running Q4Max.
This image shows one page of the settings menu, showing the level of in-game configuration available in Q4Max.
The models shown in the menu are updated if you change the colours - which allows players to set team and enemy brightskins to their preferred colours.
The Q4Max menus have almost all settings that players need to adjust, so there shouldn't be much need to manually edit configs.