The thing is though, on the DIK path, what really is different with Quinn's interactions? About the only thing I can think of is the scene in the HOT house in ep 4 if you stay with Sage, but you can do pretty much everything else without being on that path and can have a reasonably good relationship with her. Also, you can stay at the HOT house with Neutral or CHICK affinity and Sage starts telling the MC about how she thinks Quinn likes him and you get the same hints to that throughout the game as those on the DIK path, yet she turns your help down just because you're not on the DIK path and with M&J, both of which are things that, realistically, shouldn't have any effect here if you've done enough with her.
Whether the MC is DIK or CHICK, Quinn would still feel it "weak" to open up to him and there's nothing to really differentiate these 2 paths such that Quinn would feel more comfortable talking to a DIK MC as opposed to a CHICK or Neutral MC. The only thing that really should matter is what you've done with her, and as long as you took her number, used her services twice, and had sex with her in ep 4, that should realistically be more than enough to make her trust him on any path.
I think you're letting the idea that there are simple "paths" to the game blind you to other possible explanations.
What's different is that Quinn can see the MC has a relationship with Maya in one case, but not in the other. It's not hard to believe people would notice the difference between an MC that still has a thing for Maya and one that only thinks of her a friend.
In the former case, it looks to Quinn like the MC is treating her the same way he treats Maya: a damsel in distress he needs to help. In the latter, the MC is treating her differently than Maya: he continues to show interest in Quinn after dismissing Maya. I can see how that difference would matter to someone like Quinn.
She clearly places a lot of importance in her own self-image as someone outside the mainstream, someone who plays others rather than being played by them. So when an M&J MC offer to help her, she'll turn him down; she's no one's damsel. But when an MC treats her tenderly in a way he does not seem interested in treating Maya (at least now), she grudgingly accepts.
Of course, this is entirely me trying to find an explanation in my own mind for something the game refuses to discuss. That's the crux of the problem. The game has too many different rationales for gating scenes and it oscillates between them seemingly at random. Sometimes it uses one of the three abstract game mechanics (RP, status or Affinity); sometimes it remembers previous choices (like Maya and Josy remembering if you slept with one of them); sometimes it bases it purely on in-game information (Bella "coming around"); sometimes it bases it purely on out-of-game information (tying the inane D&G sex scenes to the initial option to seduce Quinn only); sometimes it tells you why it did what it did (Jill's photo); sometimes it hides that it did anything (Quinn's rejection); and sometimes it outright lies to you (Maya/Josy's rejection scenes in Ep 5).
There's no rhyme or reason to it, so any individual example can always be argued for or against. It is what it is at this point. But I think we can all agree that the days of three paths being enough to see everything are over. For better or worse, you're going to need a bunch of custom runthrough to get everything by the time we're done.
One more reason to hope this doesn't drag out to 20 episodes.
