Did the bag opener process just get nerfed?

Since the recent update, my loot from mete events has changed. For example, instead of getting gear from gear bags in the silverwastes, I'm getting those unidentified (blue, green and yellow) bags. It's a boon in that my inventory isn't filling up anymore after a run through the Octovine, so from that perspective the change was beneficial. However, when I open said unidentified blues and greens with my level 50 bag opener, all the items are level 80 now and they salvage into only Tier 5 and 6 materials. What?!!Am I missing something? How can we get a hold of the more expensive T3 and T4 mats now? I still need boat loads of cotton, linen and iron.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/72311/game-update-notes-march-26-2019

You have to leave them in the masterwork gear bag and move that over to your bag opener

Ashantara - Thanks for posting a link to the change log, but I already knew they made the change. I was more asking what to do about it. :)

Linken - Oh great. That means I have to learn to identify which bags drop the unidentified bags. Plus many of the drops are already unidentified bags as is, so there's no way to get T4 mats from them anymore once they were looted on a level 80 map, I guess. Oh well, you know what they say, it's a bag in a bag world. And thanks for the tip.

If I'm not mistaken, the price for T3-T4 mats is going up, up, up.

@Gorkus.7496 said:If I'm not mistaken, the price for T3-T4 mats is going up, up, up.People are changing how they farm, so all markets are going to be in flux for a while. You'll notice that ecto have also been on the rise and they aren't affected by mid-tierm bag openers.

That means I have to learn to identify which bags drop the unidentified bagsThe good news is that there's a small number of core, HoT containers that drop L80-level regardless of character level.Most PoF containers already dropped unID gear, with the exception of champ bags (which weren't changed).

@Gorkus.7496 said:Since the recent update, my loot from mete events has changed. For example, instead of getting gear from gear bags in the silverwastes, I'm getting those unidentified (blue, green and yellow) bags. It's a boon in that my inventory isn't filling up anymore after a run through the Octovine, so from that perspective the change was beneficial. However, when I open said unidentified blues and greens with my level 50 bag opener, all the items are level 80 now and they salvage into only Tier 5 and 6 materials. What?!!Am I missing something? How can we get a hold of the more expensive T3 and T4 mats now? I still need boat loads of cotton, linen and iron.

Weren't the blue and green you get from sw lv80? You never got any t4-t3 from bules and greens drops.What you actually did is open gear and champ bags on lowbie to get low level gear, to salve to low level mats.Loot from SW didn't change, you are just confused.

@Gorkus.7496 said:Ashantara - Thanks for posting a link to the change log, but I already knew they made the change. I was more asking what to do about it. :)

Linken - Oh great. That means I have to learn to identify which bags drop the unidentified bags. Plus many of the drops are already unidentified bags as is, so there's no way to get T4 mats from them anymore once they were looted on a level 80 map, I guess. Oh well, you know what they say, it's a bag in a bag world. And thanks for the tip.

If I'm not mistaken, the price for T3-T4 mats is going up, up, up.

If you get unidentified gear as a drop directly from an enemy or a chest in the world then before this update it would have been a random piece of level 80 gear - so all that's changed there is they now stack until you identify them.

As for opening bags on low level alts for materials that's unchanged. Move all the same bags you always did over to the same alt and they'll give you the same drops when you open them. If you were opening the green bags of gear on a level 80 first then you were already losing some of the lower tier materials you could have gotten because the level of materials is determined by the level of the item, and that's determined by the character opening the bag.

I wasn't talking about loose drops of blue and green items, but the 'bags of gear'. It seems like the bag of gear, which is character level dependent, has been replaced with the unidentified versions for many drops. That isn't to say all drops. I am still getting some bags of gear, but at a significantly lower number than previously. This directly relates to the number of T3-T4 materials that can be salvaged as the unIDs are level 80 while the bags of gear are character level dependent. I'll do a few more runs today as I have, in the past, been accused of having a too small sample size. I am basing my confusion on the notion that in the past, I would get an entire stack of iron and linen after doing 5-6 SW runs while now that same amount of runs produced about half that.

@Gorkus.7496 said:I wasn't talking about loose drops of blue and green items, but the 'bags of gear'. It seems like the bag of gear, which is character level dependent, has been replaced with the unidentified versions for many drops. That isn't to say all drops. I am still getting some bags of gear, but at a significantly lower number than previously. This directly relates to the number of T3-T4 materials that can be salvaged as the unIDs are level 80 while the bags of gear are character level dependent. I'll do a few more runs today as I have, in the past, been accused of having a too small sample size. I am basing my confusion on the notion that in the past, I would get an entire stack of iron and linen after doing 5-6 SW runs while now that same amount of runs produced about half that.

Without the actual samples, the conclusion is always going to be: there's not enough evidence to evaluate the claim. (Small sample size is the least of the issues in that case.) I believe you that you might have gotten X stacks of Y after Z SW runs; it would be more compelling if you actually had recorded how much loot (and of which sort) you received during those sessions. Otherwise, we're comparing apples to escargot.

For example, there were tons of reports after the Istan nerf(s) that the rewards were substantially reduced overall. The problem is that people only reported how much volatile magic they were accumulating; they ignored all the other sources of income in describing the issue. Since ANet said there were changes to 'other', it's impossible to compare. (It's quite likely it was an overall nerf; we just don't have actual evidence to determine for sure, let alone by how much.)

I only know of one group that kept really good records about Silverwastes farming. Unfortunately my contact no longer plays the game and I have little confidence that they are using the same methodology to keep track of their results. If you're interested in investigating the claim that there's less overall income, send me a note and I'll see if I can track down any of their old posts. Maybe it's possible to do some sort of before|after comparison despite the issues.

Bags of masterwork gear are map reward, always were. I just checked SW and it hasn't changed. I can't recall any bag with blue gear from SW tho