When I think 'cheap' I tend to think of MW2.
In a sense, the game was so balanced, it was unbalanced - because unless you were ridiculous, it was almost impossible to stay alive for a few minutes, since there was a ridiculous amount of ways to die, either from overpowered class combinations or constant killstreaks and grenades covering every inch of the map in instant death. Often, you'd spawn, turn around and die. Sometimes it felt like in order to well, you had to use tactics that felt cheap - such as camping or being one of those assholes running around and stabbing/shooting everyone in the back or spamming everything with explosives. It was a mess, but I still enjoyed it - it just had a massive ratio of deaths that felt cheap, as opposed to earned.
Black Ops felt a little more balanced in that sense, but it was still pretty bad.
Playing Bad Company: Vietnam though, I rarely get that sense.
The game feels balanced and far less about 'cheap' kills - they are rare in that game, and the gameplay becomes far more about skill. Perhaps it's also the larger maps? Random grenades are far less of an issue, and the game doesn't have anonymous, random death falling from the sky without pause.
Does time alive for a skilled player (camping excluded) = 'not cheap'? Not entirely (particularly depending on game modes), but it does feel like a good indicator for me in FPS MP games.