In my perspective, recent div.1 contests (maybe also include div.2) are much harder than before in codeforces.
In round 743 (div.1), problem A is only 1800 while problem B is 2500, then C is 2700, such a huge gap.
In round 745 (div.1), problem A is 1700, problem C is 2200 while problem B is 2600 and problem D is 2900.
If you participate in (or virtual participate in) these two contests, I think you must agree that they're much harder than previous contests. I don't think it's a coincidence, though problems are always getting harder though time lol
On AtCoder, ARC has returned and ABC has added more problems which means the difficulty is increased.
So maybe codeforces are started to change? I think now the difficulty of div.1 is more close to AGC, but I'm no so sure.
I'm glad to hear your ideas ^_^
btw, i hope someone could tell me some methods to train to deal with recent problems, they're hard and focus more on thinking which i'm not so used to ;)
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my personal ideas: now div.1 problems are too hard as they combine high level technique and requires thinking a lot of steps and some intuition, sometimez i feel easy problems are so distant from hard problems in one contest... hope to see more problems that can be in the middle, that can teach participants more (maybe only because i'm too weak so i have these doubts lol)
I still have PTSD from all Div1s I've participated in
agree
finally
One thing to keep in mind about Round 743 was that it was unrated about 30-40 mins in, so a lot of participants would have left due to the lengthy queue. So the difficulty of the later problems are likely a bit skewed.
But yeah the Div1B of 745 is tougher than what we usually see at that position.
Round 743 had technical issue so it shouldn't count (I think that B was around 2100-2200 if no issue occurred). Round 745 was a bit harder than usual but if B and C were swapped then it was fairly okay. Some of other tough rounds:
If the contests are to be imbalanced (for myself), I would prefer it to be on the difficult side so I can at least think more. I don't know why anyone would like typing contests.
Just git gud lol
IMO the recent harder difficulty change is fine since it makes the problems more interesting.It's still capturing the spirit of codeforces, which seems to be solving hard programming puzzles with more emphasis to puzzles than programming; the 2500 B was straight up ad-hoc, and the 2600 B was dp (although the constraints weren't chosen well). The 2900 D was also a really cool dp problem and didn't require any advanced data structures/algorithms, just dp at the end of the day.
I agree they are getting harder, but I rather have hard interesting contests than boring ones. Even for people like me who can't solve many of the problems in contest, there are then more remaining problems that are interesting to upsolve.
I think the problems are hard but also educational. Just like 1581B - Diameter of Graph helps me understand more about graphs. I'd really like to learn in codeforces by having contests with hard problems, think, and develop.
I actually feel that it's not because problems are hard though — it's because both problem ratings and people's ratings are inflated. (my absurd opinion: problems have eaven become easier than before, despite the high ratiungs)
But I'd like to have so many AGCs, XD