For me, the reason I hate multiplayer achievements is because they're not only done so stupidly... But, they exist merely to pad out the experience of multiplayer. They also tend to include really heavily luck based achievements that will require you to grab a whole bunch of friends in order to boost the achievement. This isn't even getting into games where 95% of the achievements in it are multiplayer based (Turok for Xbox 360, anyone?). This also isn't even getting into games that have really terrible multiplayer either. Perfect Dark Zero has a large amount of grindy achievements in its multiplayer mode... But, it's multiplayer mode is so boring compared to other games (or even the original Perfect Dark).
What you describe is merely bad achievement design. Achievements are a relatively new addition to games and designers either don't care about them (and therefore give very little thought in creating them) or don't even know what makes a good or bad achievement and so pick generic feats (reach Lv. 50) or randomly pick numbers (1000 pistol kills).
First off, if a game is primarily a multiplayer game (ex: Call of Duty), it makes sense to me that the majority of achievements lie within the multiplayer. The presence of multiplayer achievements should not itself instill anger or resentment IMO.
Secondly, if the multiplayer of the game is crap, as in your Perfect Dark Zero example, why should it be exempt of achievements? The developers probably did not intend for the multiplayer to be crap, so I'm not sure why they should have omitted multiplayer achievements or reduced the amount in this case. If a game has multiplayer, to me, it's a given that there will be at least one or two achievements tied to it. If the game winds up being crap, the achievements could be annoying to obtain even if there's no inherent flaw in the achievement design itself.
And luck-based achievements? I completely agree with you. I hate them and they are the perfect example of horrible achievement design. If your game has a casino, there should NEVER be an achievement for getting a Royal Flush; that is a ridiculous thing to demand. So as I said before, the biggest problem with multiplayer achievements right now is that the designers are not putting enough thought into them and are creating these ridiculous and unfun conditions to unlock them.
But not all multiplayer achievements are like this though. I will use Uncharted 2 / 3's online trophies as my examples:
Uncharted 2 and 3 have an online co-op mode of 2-3 players and they require TEAMWORK and coordination / communication. They are ridiculously fun to play, though. In Uncharted 2, there is a trophy for beating all Co-Op Campaign levels on the hardest difficulty. This is something that takes skill and patience and it really feels good when you accomplish it. Uncharted 3 shifts the trophy requirements so that you have to beat any Co-Op Campaign level on the hardest difficulty without losing a life. Another trophy that takes skill and patience. Uncharted 3 also has trophies tied to doing something specific in a specific Co-Op Campaign level. In one level, you have to defend a statue for a certain duration, and the statue can withstand 5 hits from enemy RPGs. There is an incredibly difficult trophy that requires you to complete that segment on the hardest difficulty without letting the statue lose a single hit point. This requires teamwork, skill, and knowledge of the enemy wave spawns during that gameplay segment. I would use these as examples of
good trophy design. Now Uncharted 2 and 3 have their fair share of horrible trophies as well, but I still think that multiplayer achievements, in and of themselves, should not be blasted with such hate. There are ways to do them well - the problem is that the designers either don't care or don't know how.
When you have achievements in your game that are decidedly unfun to obtain (as in, take a ton of hours to obtain in a mode that just isn't designed well), then you've essentially got achievements for the sake of trying to prolong the life of your game. I view doing this as wrong.
Why do I view it as wrong? Well, achievements are essentially another version of a "skinner box". There's a reason achievement hunters exist despite the lack of any kind of tangible reward for obtaining them. Because that little "plick!" with the score and name popping up sends that little pleasure jolt into our brain as if we'd accomplished something major. When you start tying that to playing a game for 400 hours or getting 100 kills with every weapon in multiplayer... You are essentially tricking people into playing your game longer than they normally would. If your game is good in single player or multiplayer, it does not need achievements to keep people playing it. It just doesn't. People will come back and keep playing those modes regardless of the achievements. This is true of any multiplayer mode as well. If your multiplayer is fun without achievements, players will play your multiplayer regardless (Battlefield or Call of Duty, anyone?).
On one mobile game that I worked on as a tester, one of the game designers sent me a tentative Game Center trophy list and asked me for feedback and ideas. That tentative list was made of the most generic set of conditions, and many of them were extremely grindy. Here's the reality, game designers don't always have the time to actually be playing the game during development. They are SO busy with the actual design process, that they are detached from how the game is actually functioning and playing out based on the systems they design. So they have almost NO basis for what actions in their game could constitute to a valid trophy. You need to play the game for a LONG time before you get a good sense for what's fun in the game, what's not working so well, and then you can decide which sections of the game to create trophies for. This is why when I was a tester, playing that game 8 hours a day, I could immediately look at his tentative list and pick out the ones that would be ANNOYING AS HELL to obtain, which ones would be fine, and then I could pitch my own ideas on what I thought would work well based on my extensive experience PLAYING the game.
The point of that anecdote was that achievements are often nothing more than an afterthought. Many platforms a game is developed for (Xbox, PS3/4, Mobile) REQUIRE achievements for their games regardless if the developer actually wants to use them or not. It's hard to imagine that game designers may not really care about them and therefore only come up with the generic, grindy, useless ones, and leave it at that. Without playing the game extensively, they don't even know what are the coolest and toughest things to do in their own game.
Is the solution to this problem just to do as achievement hunters would prefer? To only create a few extremely basic achievements (Win 1 multiplayer match!)? I don't think so. This is merely falling back to the whole "achievements should FEEL like an achievement" line of thought. I think play testers are a game designer's most useful tool for figuring out which actions could lead to fun and rewarding achievements. This is applicable to BOTH single player AND multiplayer.
