Knowing how many rounds you have to the exact bullet has nothing to do with 'skill' level.
I don't play AH any more but I think the ammo counter just looks like crap. For that reason alone I hope someday HT gets rid of them, but in the past he said they will remain.
If any of you play FB/AEP/PF you know that even the ammo counters on the German planes are difficult to guess at how much ammo you have left.
I fly mostly with 3 to 4 other guys regularly only in the 109. The lack of an accurate ammo count actually adds to the excitement in some of the dogfights.
The other night we were on a server with a furball of about 20 planes (109s, 190s vrs. B-25s, Il2s Yak 9s and La-5FNs) We each had a few kills and rtb'ing when were bounced by several La-5FNs (my track showed 3 after the fact). We killed all but one who was hanging back doing the hit and run like hell routine. Diving high speed pass, run like hell then zoom into space to repeat.
The only way we can kill this guy is if we get him to commit to killing one of us. We want to kill him not just avoid him. The plan was to trick him into committing then drag him for our wingman.
Well the trick and drag worked and as I closed to kill the La-5FN I told my wingman to go up.
There he was, an La-5FN hanging in my site and when I squeezed the trigger 1 cannon round flies out then nothing...
I was out of ammo, the ammo counter showed a sliver which could mean anything from 1 to 4 rounds. The la-5 series in iFB/AEP/PF is extremely resistant to german ammo. I was in an early G-6 with the 3cm cannon. Typically an average of 2 well placed hits will destroy them.
I hit the La-5FN on the engine and he bellowed black smoke. This wasn't the spot I wanted, I was aiming for his canopy from about 100m away. After he got hit he dove out and ran. I followed peppering him with 7.6mm but I had to let him. I coudn't catch him otd in my G-6.
After intense dogfights part of the excitement in trying to get out and home is wondering if you have enough ammo to deal with the one or two bad guys you might run into. Believe there are always 1 or 2 guys orbiting the egress waiting to jump those rtb'ing.
I guess this type of thing wont apply to most AH players because they tend to avoid the fight. If they never fire their guns they never need to worry about how much ammo they have...

But seriously I think they are an eye sore and for that reason alone I hope they vanish. I don't think it would matter one bit in terms of ma game play. In fact you may end up with more timid flyers concerned about whether they have the 1000 rounds or so left to spray and pray.
It may have a small imapct of ToD and events but who knows.
How about getting rid of the damage list while in flight instead?