Hybrid-casual games often die in meetings, not in stores. One lead says retention is fine; another says players never reach the meta. Both can be looking at truthful numbers that describe different depths.
Depth bands give the room a shared map. Band A covers open-to-first-reward. Band B covers first-reward-to-first-failure. Band C covers recovery into a second intentional attempt. Band D covers the first return session that replays the core loop without tutorial scaffolding.
Name the bands in your event glossary, not only in a slide. When an event fires at a band boundary, everyone can point to the same sentence in the doc.
Engine comfort still belongs in the story. If Band B collapses on thermally hot devices while Band B holds on cool ones, you are not looking at a pure economy problem. Session depth and frame comfort travel together more often than teams admit.
Keep the first version of your bands imperfect. A living map that the team corrects after each patch beats a perfect taxonomy that never leaves the analytics folder.