So characters can start with almost twice the cash as in sr4, ware prices have gone up between 2 and 3 times. Looking over magic items prices, most foci are now cheaper. More cyber hate.

Sr4
Power focus Rating x 25000
Weapon Focus Rating x 10000

Sr5

Power focus Rating x 18000
Weapon focus Rating x 7000

ware prices:

cerebral booster R x 0.2, R x 31500 vs SR4 R x 0.2, R x 10000
sleep regulator 0.1 12000 vs SR4 0.15, 10000
synaptic booster R x 0.5, R x 95000 vs SR4 R x 0.5, R x 80000

muscle aug R x 0.2, R x 31000 vs SR4 R x 0.4, R x 7000
muscle toners R x 0.2, R x 32000 vs SR4 R x 0.4, R x 8000
tailored pheromones R x 0.2, R x 31000 vs SR4 R x 0.2, R x 15000

wired 2 39000 SR4 2 11000
3 149000 SR4 3 32000
5 217000 SR4 5 100000
muscle replacement R x 1, R x 25000 SR4 R x 1 R x 5000
dermal plating R x 0.5 R x 3000 SR4 R x 0.5 R x 5000
skillwires R x 0.1 R x 20000 SR4 R x 0.2 R x 2000

Do note that Foci require Karma to bind, and the Karma in question is lost forever if you decide to "upgrade" your Focus.

So, that always been the case and has nothing to do with the topic and do note those karmacosts went down too.

I think the intent is for more foci to actually be used -- it was hard to pop a 200,000 nuyen power focus onto an enemy mage just so your mage could steal it after the fight, but if they're 30-60k apiece, finding one every now and then on a bad guy won't break the economy.

What I don't get is the disenchanting thing -- I can't think of a possible reason you'd want to disenchant a focus for reagents, since reagents are so cheap.

Let's say you have a Force 4 Power Focus (24 karma), worth 72,000 nuyen.

You're a decent disenchanter/alchemist, so you roll 15 dice to to convert a maximum of 8 reagents (let's say you get 6). So now you've got a whopping 120 nuyen worth of reagents. If you want to just sell the focus, you're still winning out even if you can only get 1% of its value (720 nuyen).

It's almost a better idea to pass them out as party favors.

It should also be noted that the addiction threshold for Foci also came down. You are now at risk for focus addition if the combined force of all active foci is greater than your Magic ATT. A steep drop from 2*Mag in SR4.

Of course it is relevant to the topic at hand. Sams can afford to have a high Resources rating, since they can always put Magic at E, and Resources at chargen went up dramatically. Whereas Karma is a very limited resource, which everyone needs all the same. Mages on the other hand will be hard pressed to even afford the 60k Resources at start.

So no, it isn't "cyber hate". Go play a Streetsam already, and realize that the grass is not greener for everyone else (apart from maybe Mystic Adepts).

Honestly here's the deal and i'm just going to come out and say it. If you had someone on the writing team who liked your archietype you got better in 5th edition. Evidently there were no street sam fans at the writing table. You had Critias presumably giving us boosted adepts, and presumably the abomination that is mystic adepts. You had Bull responsible for making sure Deckers (shudder) can hack peoples guns and brick peoples cybereyes, but there was no one who said, "Hey guys, ware should be cool, lets give people a reason to play Street Sam characters." That honestly more then anything is dimming my enthusiasm for 5th edition. i look at all these things i've got to house rule and all these thigns that won't get used unless I adjust them and I wonder how they went so wrong, how one entire portion of the house got neglected in favor of magicrun.

No they didn't, like at all when compared to price hike on ware(seriously some of them are even significantly more expensive then SR3 where sams started with a cool mil) .
Seriously my SR4 combat face build used 320k at chargen, going to be pretty damm hard to try and rebuild her with the new prices.

How about you do it, show me your build. I'll show you mine. When chance and I discuss shortcomings it's not theoretical, it's observatiosn actually found in play and in character creation. But I tell you what, go build the best street sam you can and see how he come out compared to an adept or a Mage Sam.

Isn't physical damage easier to deal out now than previously?

Out of the gate, my money is on a well built sam over an adept. They might not be as fast, but they are tougher and make up for most shortcomings with their ware. I agree they took a slight nosedive with some of the costs (namely wires) but I'm willing to bet it would be a close fight with the sam usually taking the lead.