The key to keeping soap from getting goopy is to keep it dry.
If you use it right after unwrapping it, then there's one simple way to have it dry off: put it in a dish or tray that keeps it off the bottom and lets it drain. It's not enough for the dish or tray to have drain holes: drain holes clog quickly. The dish or tray should also have narrow bars or pegs to hold the soap up in the air, and drain holes so soap does not build up underneath and water drains away.
Soap on a rope utilizes the same principle as the good dish design described, but it just doesn't use any dish at all...
water drips off and the soap is air-dried. .
Goopiness at first use can be lessened if the soap is unwrapped days before its first use: that way the little bit of water in the soap from the manufacturing will be partially evaporated. If a lot of water escapes into the air, the soap may show cracks. That's ok.
Not only is goopy soap unpleasant to handle, but it leads to waste. When soap is falling off your hands or washcloth, it's not doing any cleaning. When soap is lathering a lot, the soap in the bubbles is not cleaning, either. A soap bar that lathers very little is ideal. Dry soap will lather less than wet soap.
Making your soap bar hang on a rope would work, but all the soap from the hole would be wasted and the last bit of soap next to the rope would probably be unusable as it fell apart.