By 'trading at' do you mean the token sale price or the market price? The former is determined by the developers but the later is influenced by the market forces. Bitcoin was once trading very cheap a dozen or so years ago.
I feel like why make them so worthless when you have good plans for them? I just feel more like they are created for pump and dump purposes,
This depends on the token dynamics, if a coin or token has a huge supply, fixing a huge price for the presale would create a huge market cap, which would be unsustainable.
It could be a pump and dump shitcoin as easily as a coin set at $1 or $10, what really matters is the project fundamentals.