Why is it the devs of Roll20 refuse to allow Dm's to disable drawing on the maps?

I've heard all the canned "get more mature players" responses so I don't want to hear those. Mature people may not do that but most want to play D&d with their friends to have fun. Fun isn't a mature thing. Still most Dms would prefer not to have the token layer fucked up because their friends are goofing off. Possible solutions to this would be to have a player drawings layer or to simply allow the Dm to disable players ability to draw.

Agreed.  The DM should be able to stop this function. Period.

Also totally agree with this. I play with friends, and most of the time this isn't an issue. But once in a while, one friend goofing off and drawing something funny turns into a derailing event that gets everybody off task. Even with the ability to clear all drawings from the page, it doesn't prevent new drawings from being added immediately afterward. I'm not a particularly confrontational person, and even a minimally assertive request like "stop it please, so we can get on with the session" can be easily misinterpreted as combative when all everyone's trying to do is have fun. Creating an option to broadly disable and enable this feature where appropriate would save my group of nerds with ADHD a lot of frustration. Kudos if you go a step further and allow disabling/enabling player-by-player, so the DM can put misusing players in "drawing time-out" without having to take the drastic step of booting them from a game or ending the session early.

You should post in the Suggestions & Ideas forum so we can upvote it if we agree. If it’s already there, upvote it. 

Where would you draw the line on such control? Players can also change their screen or token name to any disruptive or offensive word. They can post any text or image they like in chat. They can change their token image or character avatar to any  disruptive or offensive image. Not being combative or saying the idea lacks merit, but trying to figure out what this would solve.

I have never experienced this problem. I know ou don't want to hear it, but get more mature friends ia a perfectly valid response - kick ny players who do this and it will quickly stop. I don't see how disabling a feature that many players need is seen as less combative. If players are going to argue about one thing they will find something else to argue about.  As Keith says, if players want to disrupt a session there are plenty of other ways to do that. If you lock this down, you'll quickly find the other ways they'll sue.

For me, a player can only change their own screen or token name (assuming the character or token is not set to be controlled by other players). Should a player become offensive in that fashion it is easy to see who is doing it.  Not so easy to see who is doodling what. Players doodles can be in any color, makes it so you have to 'punish' a whole table due to one person, and that is without considering a 100% distracted table. 

Juwebles said: I've heard all the canned "get more mature players" responses so I don't want to hear those. Mature people may not do that but most want to play D&d with their friends to have fun. Fun isn't a mature thing. Still most Dms would prefer not to have the token layer fucked up because their friends are goofing off. Possible solutions to this would be to have a player drawings layer or to simply allow the Dm to disable players ability to draw. With VTTES you can permit or deny your players to draw on the map. BUT this only works with Firefox and is - obviously - not supported by Roll20. AND it does NOT work with the redesigned toolbar...

The DryErase API by TheAaron (shocker!) handles this. I had to install this myself as both of my groups weirdly went into "let's draw offensive shapes!" mode completely at random, several times. They thought it was hilarious but it was hugely disruptive, hence I installed this. I know this only helps pro subscribers and I'm guessing this topic is around granting this level of control to all Roll20 users, but thought I'd mention it anyway as I've found it extremely useful.

Ultimately folks, this is something that should be in the suggestion forum. More suggestions makes it a higher priority for the Devs.