It's basically a jetpack that runs on human fuel, that's the fun in it. You have pretty much the same capabilities, but it's you who makes the engine work and decide on the speed.
What would make it more interesting (possibly) is if it had the same steering possibilities as a jetpack. Rope as it is now is limited to \, I or / angles. In practice this means the only decent maps to roperace on are strictly horizontal and vertical tubes. It's impossible to race a tube that is diagonal, or a corner that is circle-shaped.
A perfect one isn't needed though, there needs to be some limitations, that's part of the fun. Nothing beats blowing yourself up releasing a zook
Remapping doesn't seem essential? I'd keep it simple, more than arrows and spacebar to use and the thing becomes overly complicated? Like, it's hard enough for newbs in WA to rope.
W2 is more frisky a rope, it's a tiny bit quicker and it doesn't reach as far as WA one. What makes the W2 one the most fun to me is the sound of the 'ploing'
Realistic rope physics? Like in the newer generation worms? It works terrible :x You need the rope to be stiff..
I take it you've looked at the one in speedrunners?
It has no limitation in angle it seems, although I'm not sure it's perfect just yet. Haven't played this game myself btw, but perhaps you can pick up on some things, like the way zooks and such are shot while in mid-air. In your worms clone it could be something like this as well, where you perhaps select rope at the start of the turn, but where you can let go off the rope during a race and just reattach again without using a 2nd instance of the weapon. Then you could make the moving a mix of various techniques. The jumping also seems something you could implement, jumping against walls to go up large shafts and all that. In WA its just backflip and chutes :x