"Starter" should affect how worthwhile a card is for competitive play, it should affect how
complicated it is. The-powers-that-be don't want to confuse new, inexperienced players with complicated effect text or card interactions, let alone things that actually require the official rulings to understand, but that does not and should not equate to underpowered cards. Vanilla? Probably, but not under powered.
The idea that the cards new players find easily accessible and which are even marketed to them should intentionally be designed to be weak may be how it is usually done, but it is a terrible idea that I hope both the designers eventually realize and that the player base rejects. Plus, even if we accept the notion that a "Starter" deck shouldn't be any good... nothing says that the individual cards need to be bad. Again, a "simplified" build that would struggle to win even a low level event can contain great cards.