I think they did buff Platinum Triad packs? But I agree that some sort of "99 totems to get the mount" system would be appreciated. Maybe let me trade 50 unopened platinum packs for my choice?

I've got about 20-30 tournaments completed. I'll guess 26 because about a year feels right. Each time I plan on going 18-1-1 (estimated) against the NPCs for 1620 points (or whatever) just to get my guaranteed 3 Platinum Packs for 1600 points. And from these 26*3 packs I've obtained, in order: Firion, Firion, Firion, Cecil, and Lightning. (I was raging at the third Firion lol.)

I agree that top 3 is unrealistic. (And if it's not Tidus then I don't want the top prize anyway.) Placing 4th-20th may as well just award a 4th Platinum Pack as far as I can tell. I've opened several of these bonus boosters and I can't tell what makes them special. I assume it can drop the 4 good cards? Kind of funny to think that if I'm in 3rd place during a Firion week that I'd want someone to knock me down to 4th.

Anyway if you just keep at the 2 week grind it'll eventually work out. It's a long grind if you think of it as "1-2 years" but you can only spend 30 minutes on it. Or put another way, in my one year grind to obtain 3/4 cards, I've probably only spent 13 hours on the task. Or less than 5 hours per card. Not terrible. Some achievements in the Gold Saucer are meant to be long term goals, like the 1M from each cactpot.