In which version did this start (if anyone knows). Would love to downgrade to a version where this isn't an issue.
This has always been that way. At least since v2.9.x.
There's a perfectly good explanation in the manual why it works that way .
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:W ... ermined.3F
What is CCQ and how are the values determined?
Client Connection Quality (CCQ) is a value in percent that shows how effective the bandwidth is used regarding the theoretically maximum available bandwidth. CCQ is weighted average of values Tmin/Treal, that get calculated for every transmitted frame, where Tmin is time it would take to transmit given frame at highest rate with no retries and Treal is time it took to transmit frame in real life (taking into account necessary retries it took to transmit frame and transmit rate).
So since CCQ is calculated based on what is transmited over the air, it makes perfect sense that it only shows the real numbers when there is traffic.
What I've done in the past to always get more realistic CCQ numbers on idle links is to run a continuous ping with large packet size and small interval causing enough traffic (~1mbps) for CCQ to show something meaningful but not enough to 'steal' from real traffic.