I am from NZ but game in SEA Server with friends. Will a VPN lower my ping?
No. You cannot fix high ping by connecting to a VPN in the same country as your game server.
Geographical ping occurs because it takes longer for your requests to reach the location of the server. If you connect to a VPN server in another country, you will have high ping to the VPN server, and then you have to add the ping from the VPN server to the game server. So in effect all that would be accomplished is adding another layer of ping on top of your existing ping.
I could be wrong though, why don’t you try it?
no, but it could arguably change your routing for the better.
I would try switching to openvpn TCP as it has error correction and changing the dns to cloudflare 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1
then connect to a server where there is nice hardware on the way to your SEA server.
See if that reduces lag spikes.
It could be better, it could be worse as vpn’s use processing power
It can in some cases, because their data centers use fiber internet. This can make your ping a bit lower 
Not an expert, but I believe your overall speeds and ping may depend on which VPN protocol you use in your settings. OpenVPN is best for streaming content and preventing websites from identifying you as a VPN user, while something like Wireguard provides faster speeds.
If you don’t actually need the encryption part of a VPN, you can look into using a proxy, which changes your IP address but doesn’t shield your browsing from your ISP, so I think you’d get much better results for gaming.
Again, not an expert, so you could try googling something like “proxy vs vpn for gaming” and read up on it a bit to make sure you go with the right choice.
Ping will be the same or worse. How much worse depends on the protocol and server locations. With wireguard it could be almost the same.
hey, i know this post is a bit old but could you help me out on how to achieve that 53ms ping for sg server on valorant?