Plus with such long turn times (enough time to knock) and such big arsenal of weapons hard hides are already irrelevant. You'll never be worse off because your opponent didn't attack from rope, if you were hiding in a place where he could attack you from the ground, with ease, then you aren't in a hard hide by shopper standards to begin with.
Not really, a lot of hides in shopper maps are really hard to attack zooking from the rope.
Who cares? Do you only have zooks? You don't have enough time to grab a crate and knock? The scheme is balanced around many weapons and long turn times to knock, that's why piling is key, and that's why attacking from the ground is a risk-reward choice, in which you could potentially give up the most important aspect of a turn, the piling, just to get a shot in.
It would be really easy to attack those hides from the grounds, definitely worth giving up your retreat for.
Giving up retreat time and a pile for 50 damage tops? You're full of it, come back to earth.
Also, a hit from the ground almost always does 100% of the damage. It's a bit harder releasing weaps from the rope, especially in hard spots (see above).
Strictly depends on the weapon and the hide. You speak as if Shopper only used bazookas and mortars.
HHC, you will automatically put down anything that comes from my username, many times, looking completely naive in the process, for someone with such an experience in this game it would help you long ways if you started listening as opposed to confronting anything that comes from players striving for competition just because you have a different understanding of competition.
The only justification for AFR, the one you used, which is, removing it makes the game easier, is bullocks, like I said, attacking from the ground will result in a disadvantage for the attacker unless he knows what he is doing. It's a choice that adds to the strategy. It's a pointless rule, it has no thought behind it, the only reason it's imposed it's because this league got schemes from public games as opposed to previous league, with all the previous work put into them.
AFR was firstly removed in FB based on this arguments. You want to add them again on what basis? That no AFR makes shopper easier?
My respect for you HHC steadily decreases every time you make a post in this forum. You've played this game for 14 years and cannot even get your head around a scheme like Shopper. Seems as if you don't even fully comprehend it. Either that, or bias ain't letting you sound anything other than naive, for the lack of a better non offensive term.
edit:
really hard to attack zooking from the rope. Or even knocking into.
I'd love to see examples of this. Of both these things in one hide. So i can load up a replay of me getting a crate, knocking and attacking in less than half the time I normally have in a Shopper.