  Benchmarks are essential tools for the optimizer's development. Using them,
we can check for what kind of problems a given optimizer is effective or not.
Since the objective of the Evolutionary Computation field is to support the
tools to solve hard, real-world problems, the benchmarks that resemble their
features seem particularly valuable. Therefore, we propose a hop-based analysis
of the optimization process. We apply this analysis to the NP-hard, large-scale
real-world problem. Its results indicate the existence of some of the features
of the well-known Leading Ones problem. To model these features well, we
propose the Leading Blocks Problem (LBP), which is more general than Leading
Ones and some of the benchmarks inspired by this problem. LBP allows for the
assembly of new types of hard optimization problems that are not handled well
by the considered state-of-the-art genetic algorithm (GA). Finally, the
experiments reveal what kind of mechanisms must be proposed to improve GAs'
effectiveness while solving LBP and the considered real-world problem.
