I feel the same. I like them to be a legitimate threat as long as you're not guaranteed to lose. NTR fans will lose on purpose and that's fine. There's still a bit of a grey area in the middle though where people might disagree significantly on how things should play out. A threat implies consequences if you screw up. So, how bad do you have to screw up before you start seeing consequences and at what point are the consequences capped unless you purposely choose to lose?I like the concept of Silver and Robert being more threat-worthy also. And scenes that humiliate them when you beat them. Increases tension knowing the possibility of loss, subtly plays with jealousy, but then makes victory much more sweet. I don't mind seeing what defeat looks like, but I like to go for the win.
I could definitely see people falling into 2 camps on that where some want an option where NTR is not possible no matter how poorly you score (basically a no NTR toggle) while others would rather have a sliding scale where the consequences increase depending on how badly you did. If you know there's no consequences then there's not really a threat (other than the game over scenarios).