I'm just curious.

So uh what are your motivations?

Its fun for me to see how well my team fares against others and to see how much the metagame developed.

I gotta pass the guy ahead of me on the leaderboard...and then the next guy...and then the next guy...-_-

I want to see how I stack up against the other battlers of the smogon community. While tournaments are nice, there are very few standard ones (and even those are invite only x_x) so ladder is usually my best shot.

For me it's interested to see how I fight against all the other smogoner on ladder.

Also I played ladder to test my new team!

I only ladder on the Little Cup ladder, because its the only ladder on which I can be in the top #10 on a regular basis, and i ladder just so I can stay up there.

Also I do aim to one day get to #1, and people go oh hey theres MGX the little cup guys

I need to prove myself to be as good as I can, and my rating must go up... I tend to get hax'd a lot, so I have to keep playing to maintain my rating.

1.I dont have to chalenge a guy, its much faster.
2. I play against those of my skill level.
3. I try to get a high rating.

bragging rights

Just for the entertainment of "Critical Hit!" and then next watching "Pokefan99999 says ******* *** *****" and finally "Pokefan99999 left the room".

I love testing teams as I make like 1 team based around each pokemon and a team around everyplaystyle eg Rain, Gravity Duel Screans etc etc and I just have to test test test things