Money is fairly inconsistent.  If you compare tria to dollars, sometimes a tria seems to be worth about a dollar, other times a dime or 10 dollars.  Quests give rewards to make the quest worth doing, and charge amounts to set the difficulty of the quest, without regard for an underlying economy.  A few circles may be a months wages for some and pocket change for others, but if that is the case there should only be a few wealthy characters.  Below are a few examples, and there are many more.

10 dollar trias.

In one quest we learn that a sunshine squadron guard makes 2100 tria in 6 months, or 350 a month.  In another quest we learn that a sunshine squadron guard makes 4200 a year, or 420 tria a month, unless Roobelh uses a 12 month calendar.  A winch guard apparently makes the same or less, because one who was transfered complains about it.  Note also that one winch guard who sides in the Arena got 2 Trepor hearts in a night, which sells for almost a months wages.  Why keep the day job?

Food is very cheap, costing a few tria.  Food is about the only thing a guard could afford.

Potions probably fall into this category, although it is hard to judge magical substances.

1 dollar trias.

Weapon prices fall roughly here.  Some rare flowers cost about 20 tria each.  Sending a message to the bronze doors costs 20 tria.  Beverages cost much more than food, and seem to fit more in this category.  A kitchen knife is 50 tria.

Raw materials seem to be priced here.  I hope a gold ingot is enough to make 2 golden circles, and so has a slightly lower value.  That would make sense.

10 cent trias.

A certain Kran appears to consider 2 diamonds as a snack.  If 10 diamonds was a days food, that Kran would eat 320000 tria worth of diamonds a year.  Diamonds cost 100 tria, 10 months of 32 days.  That is an expensive diet.  Maybe Kran only eat a full meal once a month, but it seems to be implied that Kran eat as often as others.  Maybe add some text saying he hadn't eaten in weeks and felt a bit peckish.

A leather apron costs 200 trias, although there are extenuating circumstances.  And a waitress can afford that with only some hesitation.  If a waitress was on the same tria scale as a guard, that would probably be a months wages.

Candle wax costs 100 trias.  Ink and paper costs 50 trias.  A blank book costs 100 trias.  Paper appears fairly common as notes and receipts are bandied about in lots of quests without concern, but when you go to buy some it is suddenly a rare commodity.  Either use wooden nickels in place of paper notes, or acknowledge that paper is common.

The taxes that people owe indicate that a tria is not worth much.  And the tasks performed to get people to pay taxes indicate little concern for what would be 10 years wages to a guard.

Jewelry probably falls here, as an unadorned golden ring just isn't worth that much.

Other things.

Some quests refer to disparate prices for goods in different areas, but all the goods that players trade have equal value everywhere.  With the exception that in some quests you get a one time offer of some highly inflated amount.

Diamonds sell for much more than other crystals.  In RL diamonds have a wider variety of industrial uses, and there is probably some artificial inflation of diamond jewelry.  Is there a diamond cartel in Yliakum too?  Why are diamonds worth 100 times as much as rubies?  Maybe diamonds are much more magically potent or something, but they are equally difficult to mine.

I really like the fact that, for the most part, you can play PlaneShift with either the mouse, keyboard, or both.  For those of us with wrist troubles or other difficulties, it is really nice to be able to just use the method of input we prefer.  For myself, I prefer to play with just the keyboard.  Shortcuts go a long way to making it so that, with a little setup, we can customize the game to our own play style.  There are just a few holes that I would like to see filled.

For instance, the only way to loot a monster is with the mouse.  It would be nice if there was a shortcut to fully loot a monster, instead of just bringing up the loot window.  During combat, the only thing you need the mouse for is looting.

/loot all - take all the loot without looking at it.
/loot group - take all the loot on behalf of your group, without looking at it.

There are times when there are a lot of corpses lying around.  Either because a lot of monsters have been slain or, for now, because corpses occasionally just pile up.  The normal /target npc works in normal circumstances, but sometimes it is not sufficient.  Sometimes, even using the mouse to choose a target is difficult, and as I have said I would rather not use the mouse anyway.  What I really want is something that says, target the living npc I am looking at, which sounds obvious but is occasionally difficult.  With the mouse, targeting the npc to loot can occasionally be difficult as well, so a matching instruction makes sence.

/target npc live - target the next/prev thing you can fight
/target npc dead - target the next/prev thing you can loot

Again, in the interest of avoiding the mouse, it would be nice to be able to build shortcuts that focus the cursor in the text entry field of a specific tab.  Or maybe you want to check the system tab or whatever.  The goal here is to activate a shortcut or hit a key to select a tab.  Instead of a command, perhaps shift-tab or something would cycle through the tabs.

/tab <name> - switch to the specified tab, for making shortcuts

And on the topic of extending shortcuts, I was disappointed to find that you could not cast two spells in a shortcut.  I would prefer to see a generic means of chaining activities together, but if not just allowing sequential /cast commands in a shortcut would be nice.  If you use buff spells, you probably use more than one.  Maybe it would be limited to not cast the same spell sequentially or whatever, but shortcuts seem like the ideal place to chain activities together.

/wait <time> - wait a few seconds in a shortcut
/wait activity - wait until the current activity (spell/repair/mining/etc...) is done

There have been a few posts about how to deal with not waving weapons in the faces of friends and merchants.  The reason I do it is because the only way to take off weapons on involves opening up the inventory and dragging things around.  If I could make a shortcut that would do it, I would much rather not flash my weapons once I arrive in the safety of the city.  And while we try to escape into the reality of the game, we are limited occasionally by our own reality.  And convenience sometimes wins.  This could move items out of the hands, as described, or simply hide them until the inverse command is performed or the combat stance changes.

/sheath - remove any weapons in hands, for easier role playing in tavern
/? - restore the last weapons you sheathed, if legal

Prospecting seems like an intrinsic part of mining.  The miner in Toy Story was even named the Prospector.  Not a big deal, but it seems like it would be useful.

/prospect - see what you can /dig at a certain location, in case you forgot your pick
  higher mining level might get a quality report also

A nice benefit of the contract system is that, if anyone can browse open contracts, it gives an idea of value and demand.  If there lots of orders for a specific good then more people will learn to produce that good.  And the contract system should support both buying and selling.  You might put in a contract to buy some armore, or you might put in a contract to sell some swords.  The in game support of holding goods or money allows players to trade even if they have trouble getting online at the same time.

There is no particular need to have shipping included in the service.  A single central npc could service all contracts.  Perhaps shipping could be had for an additional fee, based on weight, size and/or value.  Of course, with shipping, there could be bandits.  Or even caravans which could actually be robbed by players.  Maybe they offer insurance as well, or hire players to guard the caravans.

As for fees for the service, I hope it would be a fairly small fixed fee if any at all.  Or perhaps the burden of fee could be on only the buyer or seller, so that poor players can still take advantage of the system.  And if an offer is rescinded, there should be no fee.

I agree that the auction tab will not scale well.  Not that the auction tab should go away, just that it should have a little help.  The two systems operate on a different time scale.  I think the slower time scale of the contract system supports a more stable economy.

I was quitting the mac psclient_static when it crashed.  I used option-Q then agreed to quit, as opposed to using a mac event or menu.  Here is the crash log.  This is the first time it crashed on quit, although it has been very unstable today.

Date/Time:      2008-01-24 16:50:36.043 -0800
OS Version:     10.4.11 (Build 8S2167)
Report Version: 4

Command: psclient_static
Path:    /Applications/Games/Planeshift3D/psclient.app/Contents/MacOS/psclient_static
Parent:  WindowServer [57]

Version:        0.3.020 (0)
Build Version: 
Project Name:   psclient_static
Source Version:

PID:    242
Thread: 0

Exception:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes:      KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0xbf7fffac

Thread 0 Crashed:
0   psclient_static      0x00584e54 CS::SubRectangles::SubRect::TestCollapse() + 10

Thread 1:
0   libSystem.B.dylib    0x900248c7 semaphore_wait_signal_trap + 7

Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (32-bit):
  eax: 0x2b686870  ebx: 0x00584e59  ecx: 0x00000000  edx: 0x41303028
  edi: 0x00000008  esi: 0x00000020  ebp: 0x2b6868a8  esp: 0xbf7fffb0
   ss: 0x0000001f  efl: 0x00010282  eip: 0x00584e54   cs: 0x00000017
   ds: 0x0000001f   es: 0x0000001f   fs: 0x00000000   gs: 0x00000037

I always have a huge surplus of progression points compared to the amount of money I can spend on training.  So what I would like is a way to spend progression points to improve skills, either without money or with a lot less money.

What I think sounds best is that, for every other level and still limited by the maximum level of the last trainer you visited for a particular skill, you can spend progression points without a trainer.  This might take 5-10 times the progression points, but no money.  It would not work for abilities, only skills.

For example, lets say my swords skill is 33 and I pay a trainer for some theoretical knowledge.  Then I go out and practice until I am level 34.   Currently I must now return to a trainer to get more theoretical knowledge.  I propose that, at this point, I can give myself the theoretical knowledge for level 35 by spending 5 times the normal progression points, but no money.  Or maybe be partially self taught and partially trained.

Instead of the every other level thing, maybe you acquire the last step of theoretical knowledge from a trainer.  So if I have just turned level 34 I can fill the yellow bar with green all the way to the last step without a trainer, but that last step to get all theoretical knowledge needed requires a trainer.  That would take a lot less change to the database and code.  That way, if you have a lot of progression points, you can get a level for only 30 tria.  Or maybe instead of just the last point, the last quarter or third of points must be purchased from a trainer.  By having a cap at every level, there is no extra data to store, just a test of wether you are below the limit and thus can spend points.

A third option would be the ability to buy practical knowledge with progression points.  I like the differentiation between theoretical and practical experience and so do not like this idea as much, but in a sense progression points directly represent practical knowledge.

Either way, I envision clicking the buy skill button when no npc is selected would use this alternate method.  When an npc is selected, only the skills they train could be improved and only at normal cost.  I also figured that this would not work on abilities, only skills.

Right now I feel like all those progression points are wasted and serve no purpose.  The game could basically do without them and just charge money, because money is so much harder to get.  Letting players spend just progression points would balance that out, and also encourage players to diversify their skills.  Right now I can only afford to focus on a few skills.  Even if the price is exorbitant, like ten times the normal progression point cost to gain the theoretical knowledge for a level, at least I could spend the points on something.

Or maybe I am missing something and there is a much easier way to make money.  Or maybe you should only gain a progression point every 1000 experience points instead of every 200.  Or training should just cost a little less.  But if you can spend the progression points, at least a little, you will come to a natural balance between money and experience, instead of adjusting the artificial balance currently in place.

Also, holding a modifier key like shift should buy all the training you can get for an attribute or skill in one go.  Sitting there clicking the buy skill button a few hundred times might reproduce the ennui of theoretical training, but I would rather do without.

Thanks for a great game.