After watching Pirates of the Caribbean and Black Sails, my imagination was crushed :( after I found out that in real history, the most common Pirate vessels acquired were ones like sloops and brigs. especially sloops.
Ok, I'm going to try and answer on this based on what I read previously.
As far as I know, in the golden age of piracy at least, the Queen Anne's Revenge was a big exception. Most pirates would indeed use smaller sloops due to the location.
From what I read, in the Caribbean the sloops had big advantages as a lot of waters were shallow and having a big ship was more trouble than what it's worth.
Also, at the end of his carreer, Edward Teach was using sloops again as well.
To further crush your imagination, most pirates did not live in riches as often portrayed in movies but were struggling to survive which explains that most loot from pirate parties was not gold and silver but food, drink and medicines. Even the most famous raid by Edward Teach was because he needed medicine.
Sources:
Apologies for coming to this a bit late.
The Queen Anne's Revenge (QAR) was indeed a big pirate ship by West Atlantic standards, but there were other big ships around too. Bellamy's Whydah was probably smaller than the QAR, but a lot bigger than most vessels on the American coast. An obscure pirate named Penner was rumoured to have a 40 gun ship in the Caribbean in 1717, and William Moody's Rising Sun was also a large vessel. However, on the whole, pirates on that side of the Atlantic operated in smaller vessels like sloops for two reasons: firstly, they were well suited to navigating the islands and shoals of the area, as well as being fast; secondly, they were the most readily available type of vessel. That last point is important. Most of the vessels plying the trade in the Western Atlantic were small vessels, so small fast sloops were well suited to capturing them, but on the other side of the Atlantic, on the African coast, it was a different matter. Sloops and other small vessels were less common there than larger vessels, especially slavers, so not only were they harder for the pirates to come by, they were also less well suited to the task at hand. Thus, on the African coast, pirates like Howell Davis, Bart Roberts, and Edward England, frequently used large, well-armed, three-masted vessels, many of which had originally been slave ships.
Accurately estimating the size of individual pirate ships is difficult, but Roberts' flagship, the Royal Rover, was probably similar in size to the QAR, as were vessels like the Comrade, the Duke of Ormond, and the Wyndham, used by pirates on that side of the Atlantic.
In the Indian Ocean the likely prey, and available shipping, was on average larger still, and ships like the Cassandra, a former East-Indiaman commanded by Richard Taylor, almost certainly matched or exceeded the size of the QAR. Probably the biggest ship used by pirates during the 'golden age' was the Nostra Senora de la Concepcion, commanded for a while by Oliver la Buse, which reports suggest was originally a three-decker mounting perhaps as many as a hundred guns (at the largest estimate), which makes the QAR's 40 guns look rather insignificant.
[Edit for sources] There's very little reliable information written on pirate ships, but for the large Indian Ocean ships see Jan Rogozinski's Honor Among Thieves, and Charles Grey's Pirates of the Eastern Seas.