Allegedly yes. Anecdotally no. (Destiny)

by Kahzgul, Tuesday, November 28, 2017, 17:29 (2634 days ago) @ narcogen

I have no proof of this, other than to say that when I was leveling up I only got higher light items (outside of "powerful rewards") above 280 if and only if my high light gear was on my character. It was easy to tell with my warlock, since I hit 20 and had a bunch of 305 guns in the vault, but not on my character yet. My engrams didn't decrypt above 280 until I remembered those, put them on and then - bam, higher power gear.

Maybe they're tied to whether or not they've physically been in your individual character's inventory? Or maybe the game only remembers the highest light you've ever equipped in a given slot? I have no way of quickly figuring out what was up. But something was definitely up.