Hallo,
your plugin seems great, but I have the same problem as described above.
I made a fresh installation (WP is 3.8 and Participants DB Plugin is 1.5.4),could sign up and save changes in a test record. Afterwards I made several changes in the Manage Database Fields*, Settings and finally tried to save a last test record. Sign up worked, but it did not save any changes in the record and even did not even show participants first_name using [pdb_signup_thanks]:
“Thank you, [first_name] for signing up! You will receive an email acknowledgement shortly. You may complete your registration with additional information or update your information by visiting the link provided in the email.”
Thanks!
* I changed the Title of first_name, too.