I love crits! It's a chess-match on wheels pitting your mental acumen against your competitors'. I rarely care what kind of course it is, it's the other guys and who's in it that makes it interesting. And seeing what kind of tactics they're gonna use and how many steps ahead I have to think to stay on top of them. And the last 5-10 laps of the crit are the BEST! It's when the really good teams start pulling off their strategies and then you gotta figure out how to counter it. That's actually how I got into track racing, just to do the last 5-10 laps of a crit! Why bother wasting an hour of riding in circles when you can get to the good stuff right away.
Actually I thinking of ways to gauge and measure crit performance and I think I've hit on %above/%below FTP as a good metric.