Once again, at least I think someone already said this, you can also make changes within your Franchise and/or SS modes without backing out to the front end. The thing is you have to be playing a game and pause it, make your changes, and then resume the game. At the end of the game if you save your Profile those changes will be applied to the front end as well. There are a few things you have to back out to the front end to change, but come on now, is it really that hard to do and is that really something you do after/before each game. Once you get the game setup the way you want it I don't see why you would be making changes anyway. Maybe to toughen up the games a little after you've gotten better, but still, it's not like you would be doing it that much.
Yes, definitely. I usually have multiple franchises and SS modes going on at the same time and I hated how it was in the past. If I wanted to make a change i had to load up each Franchise and SS one at a time, make the changes, save it, load up the next one, make changes, save it, and continue this process until I was done. Much, much better to have one local section for all the settings which will be applied to all modes.