Even the courier can tell I don’t know what I’m doing.
DOTA 2 is by far the best competitive online multiplayer video game to feature donkey management.
In my previous Dota Diary about getting started with DOTA 2, one of the core features I mentioned is the need to spend money on items in order to keep pace with your opponents and improve your hero.
Killing AI controlled enemies and managing to take down enemy heroes rewards you with gold that starts burning a hole in your pocket. You can then exchange this for things in one of three shops on the map.
The speed at which I was advised by a helpful team-mate to spend my money at the start of the match was my first clue as to how important this was. For longer than I’d like to admit, items were something that didn’t really interest me. I knew they were there, but scanning through the selection of items which all have unique-yet-often-similar icons and tiny little mathematical modifications listed on their descriptions wasn’t something that was working out for me.
In this match, I was accompanied by meat-space friends, something that gives new jittery players like myself a tremendous amount of confidence, because if anyone starts getting too mean, you know that at least two of the other four people on your team have theoretically got your back.