To me it mostly depends on how they use them... If it's just to add friends on a list similar to the one in MoH i couldn't care less. It really didn't have much use anyway. >_>
Part of the reason MoHH2 friends weren't useful is because you couldn't choose one and jump directly to whatever server they were on. It would be a shame if that mistake were repeated.
The other part is that there weren't many features to take part in. No WiiSpeak, no custom text messages (possibly part of the reason Ninty let EA skip FCs).
Finally, in MoHH2, your EA nation id was your unique ID. In random FC games like mariokart, FCs were the unique ID, but all that was displayed was the Mii name, which could be repeated and wasn't an ID. So it was difficult to know who you were playing. When I'm playing in the Conduit, I want to know who I'm up against and be able to play them again if they're good.