definition of wealthy

[trousers]

Just a thought:

When trying to separate Game Mechanics from Lore, what would be considered 'a lot of money'?

When a player can, via gameplay, amass a billion credits what would be reasonable to be considered a large transaction?

a million credits for an individual?

a billion credits for a business?

Trillions? Quadrillions?

EDIT: citing this I'd think it'd be millions, but I would like to hear other people's opinions.

[Collodion]

Interesting...

Really kind of tough to say. I mean, I have yalms, phasefronts, my Jobe and Sunrise Station apartments but do they really have any value. I can't sell them or trade them. Would they still be considered assests? I really didn't spend much of anything on them in-game. Sure, my first yalm cost me 4.6m creds, but when everyone eventually buys one you really can't consider it a luxury class item.

Then we go to the other extreme. A half billion to several billions for a suit of end game quality alien armor is a lot. It would be considered an asset, because it can be resold sold or traded. Players who can buy and sell at this level are definitely rich. I would tend to think that any purchase over the 200m mark would be considered a large transaction.

So, now we need to find a middle ground. It's really hard to say. The better tradeskilled items are often in the 20-35m range, as are the more valuable lucky drop items. A set of VTE are 30m-ish, for example. Yet low level fixers often have the 20m for a low cost GA1.

Yet what is "wealthy" in AO? Well, I would say any one who has a suit of AI armor would qualify. Those individuals who have enough money to have their own player city and maintain upkeep on it, would also be "wealthy". Definitely any purchase of a single item for hundreds of millions would be a large transaction. And players who have multiple or able to purchase multiple items in this range would be considered "wealthy".

[trousers]

I agree, but what I am getting at is Game Mechanics vs. Lore.

Game mechanics allow us to obtain items that sells for billions of credits. The value of these credits are never adjusted to take costs of living into account. Beyond the cost of basic consumables players don't have a drain on their income like in real life.

An average neutral would have to pay Rent, Utilities, Food, etc. But since these expenses don't exist in the game economy it allows the value of items to grossly inflate along with the size of a player's wallet.

[Collodion]

Well it would be hard to judge this. I would suspect that Rubi-ka is a special case. It's the source of notum and thus all that pretty much powers nanotechnology throughout the rest of the galaxy. It's citizens would be expected to be the richest. Earth-based analogous to Saudi Arabia and the multi-national oil companies. This makes me suspect that all citizens of Rubi-ka would be considered wealthy when off world.

With the Yalm example, it might be typical of someone on Rubi-ka to own one, but would probably be a luxury elsewhere. Hence the "you are in the presence of someone very rich" line.

So I would think your original assertion of millions for an individual is right on. I would think planetary businesses might be in the billions. Interplanetary might be tens of billion or even a hundred billion. The biggest mega corporations that pretty much run the galaxy probably make so much money that they don't even think about it long enough to calculate an actual total. Each branch/division/planet has it's own profit/margin.

[Mireiawen]

If we think that Bronto Burger is somewhere around 20-30 credits, and assume that its cost go in line with how they go in real life, I believe somewhere around 10k would be monthly wage. So a rich person could be getting "only" hundreds of thousands.

Also, Kodaik price is in tens thousands, and that is car, which still sounds comparable to the Burger cost. A flying vehicle is likely for the more rich people instead of a normal Rubi-Ka citizen.