Hi Codeforces,

First I want to say that I'm genuinely grateful for all the problemsetters being willing to provide us with interesting problems and contribute to the community of competitive programming. But there's some thing I have to say.The following are my personal opinions.

Please! Reduce the amount of background stories for the problems!

I understand that some writers of contests might want to add some humor to the problems, have a theme for a problemset, or add some of their favorite anime characters' or friends' name to the problem statements to make the problems more memorable. But to be honest, I think some of these efforts are getting out of control. At least I personally feel that extended and unnecessary "stories" make it harder for me to understand what the problem wants me to do. And frankly, some of the stories don't even make sense.

For example, in the recent Round 645 Problem C, some background stories are completely unrelated to the problem:

"During the quarantine, Sicromoft has more free time to create the new functions in "Celex-2021". The developers made a new function GAZ-GIZ," "The developers of the SUM function don't sleep either. Because of the boredom, they teamed up with the developers of the RAND function,"

How are these clearly made-up things related to the problem and what do they even mean...

For another example, in EDU84, Problem B, an extremely simple and straightforward problem structure was wrapped under a story with supposedly funny names like "Polycarp LXXXIV", making the reading very time-consuming. In his live stream of the contest on Bilibili, jqdai0815 expressed his reluctance to read the problem and decided to come back to it later as soon as he saw the long description. This kind of unnecessary statements disrupt the focus and flow of even one of the best competitive programmers! It's nothing but distractions.

An earlier example of super straightforward concepts deliberately misted by stories in the description. Round 346 (Div. 2) B

To put it with painful honesty, most contestants, at least the ones I know, do not relish the little stories that writers add to the problems and they don't find them funny or mind-refreshing. What gives them joy is the process of dissecting the abstract structures of a problem and finding a way to solve it. It's frustrating to spend 5 minutes reading a problem and find out that it's describing something trivial. So I'm suggesting that contest writers to please reduce the amount of real-world context that comes with the problem. If we have to find a shortest path, then let's find a shortest path. It doesn't have to be because "Polycarp is a very smart man and he doesn't want to waste so much time on the road so that he can spend more time solving Codeforces problems with his friend and get more AC's. "

If the writers have to add something to the problem, at least separate the story from the problem with stickers or some other stuff, like in Round 635. So that those who really want to read it can spend time reading it.

Some good example of concise problem statements without too much background stories or no background stories at all:

Round 643(Div. 2) C Round 642(Div. 3) D Round 639 (Div. 2) C Round 629 (Div. 3) F

Again, this is just a kind advise. I want to again say thank u to all the people who have written contests. Your efforts and contributions are what make this community thrive.