/vr/ - Retro Games

So I decided to finally play through Strife as I've intended to for too many years...
>start game
>cool concepts, nice visuals, RPG FPS Doom clone? awesome! looks like they spent a lot of time making this game. Can't wait to sink lots of time into this bad boy
>start hacking some guards to get out of whatever the hell shithole I spawned into hyahyahya
>meet a guy who tells me I need to get some ring from some newb in a prison somewhere
>on the way enter a tavern and get told to get a chalice from the prison by some other nigga which I accept as they are in the same location
>get chalice as sneakily as Doom engine will allow but walk back into tavern to return it and get killed immediately
>look up why online as there is no way these guards could know I'm holding the chalice (is there?)
>it's not a bug but a feature of the game that was intentionally added as an homage to random game ending shit in MUDs
>you can't even do the quest AT ALL and there is just no explanation as to why, just "haha u died so random right?"
>Forgive this strange shit and continue the game
>Repeatedly get "incoming message" on the screen but no way to actually see the message
>Try to look it up online but there's no information whatsoever
>Feel like I'm going crazy as the only one with this problem so I change twenty billion settings and try different combinations of settings to no avail
>Have zero idea what to do next because I can't see these messages to tell me what to do
And so was my experience with Strife... I wanted to hard to get into this game :( What are everyone else's experiences with this title?