Interesting take. I personally think ghosting is the most enjoyable and appropriate way to play Thief - I'm often surprised that the majority of the Thief community still likes breezing through a mission by blackjacking everything. I certainly played that way when I first got into Thief, but I quickly found it boring and almost laughably easy. Once you KO everyone in your way, you can just run through a mission like you're playing a Doom level, free to kangaroo jump down tiled-floor corridors without having to worry about a single AI. Lytha style is more challenging, but even with that you have license to alert a number of AI and run away from them unscathed. I've been ghosting for eight years and I never get tired of it. I know this is partly personal taste, but I really think ghost mode as it is outlined in the official rules on the Eidos forums is a refreshing and sadly neglected playing style. I wish more in the Thief community didn't shy away from it or have misconceptions that it is "too hard." It really isn't, it just takes more patience and a delicate hand. If you can wait in the dark and sneak up to a guard and knock him out, you can certainly wait a few more seconds and skulk past his patrol instead. Ghosting some missions will obviously be harder than others (trying to ghost T1's "Escape" is tantamount to masochism). There are situations where AI seem impossible to sneak by or one must rely on alternative methods like nudging, banner transmigration, and stacking objects to avoid alerts, but that's what makes ghosting a consistently stimulating and exhilarating way of playing, whereas with blackjacking, there's not much else to do in the mission but find a target and knock it out of commission. There is such a feeling of satisfaction and sense of accomplishment with ghosting, too. I remember the first time I ghosted T2's "Life of the Party" and just knowing that I traversed the thieves' highway, looted Angel Watch, and infiltrated Karras' office without knocking out or putting one AI on 2nd alert left me much more fulfilled than I would have leaving a trail of unconscious bodies in my wake. Incidentally, I find ghosting quite preferable and more easier than KOing in TDM. The stealth score in TDM is an added incentive to even avoid first alerts, and that is where I think the most difficult Thief playing style, "supreme ghost mode", should be noted: no first alerts, no expended equipment, and all items returned to their original locations are the principal tenets. Normal ghosting isn't so difficult by comparison and there are a couple forum members from Eidos who actually believe that normal ghosting is easy. My bottom line here is that I think more people might enjoy ghosting if they remove all thoughts of it being difficult and instead think of it as an exciting way of playing that is befitting of a master thief.
