Something weird I’ve found, and maybe this is from my tendency as a gm to be biased towards camp formed npcs like orcs and such, but in my games I portray boosters and edgerunners as mostly adjacent and not even class enemies. I even portray a lot of boosters with the descriptor ‘edgerunner’ since to me it’s more of a verb than a noun and there’s no real skill floor. This is not the norm, apparently. It’s not an angle I want to change since it’s pretty easy to dissuade a kind of player who sees edgerunners as elite operatives (which the PCs can be but I always see them as underpaid for their skillset) from seeing me as doing weird things with whatever conception there is of canon by waving around the word “gutterpunk.”
It is weird though. I had a lot of interactions in the living community where people felt super cool to threaten or push around Stinger for some sense of empowerment, and my mind would boggle. There was a lot of “You’re not so tough, evildoer. I could wipe the floor with you.” And the question that would resound in my head is “Are you sure? Her skill bases in combat are maxed out for character creation. This could go south and make your PC incur critical injuries you’ll have to pay off,” alongside, “My character is only unminmaxed in a handful of respects to give solo characters space to enjoy their class fantasy without feeling overshadowed. Why are you punching down on her with your minmaxed solo?”