There's probably Paul's and Gene's truth, Ace's and Peter's truth and the real truth. I wouldn't be surprised if Peter asked for a king's ransom to move his butt to the RRHOF.
Nobody should go, except Vinnie. He could play some, uhum, licks.
Seriously, they should have gone with the new line up, which is their working line up, and invited everyone who played with them as special guests (including Vinnie, his songwriting prowess resurrected their butts in the early eighties, without his kick-start they wouldn't have survived the make up-less years), kind of like The Eagles did when they took Leadon and Meisner on board for their RRHOF performance, I have no recollection of Meisner demanding Schmit off the stage, who had at that point only one Eagles album under his belt compared to Meisner's five, or that Leadon wanted to oust Walsh from the ceremony, who had only played on two Eagles albums as opposed to Leadon's four. Peter and Ace probably demanded that it be only them.
That said, I don't think that to the average Kiss concert goer Ace's and Peter's non-presence matters more than Ringo's and George's would if John Lennon and Paul McCartney did a tour together. Kiss is about projected image not individuality, though no one can play as lovely out of time as Ace.